Point & Click
by Mizufae
Summary: What will develop when Freddie has a photography class? Half a school year of shenanigans, and discussions in the darkroom with Sam, of course. Seddie!
1. Chapter 1

**A/N Hey there, this is my very first iCarly story, and I'd really appreciate any comments you may have. I have all of this planned out, and will put up a chapter every few days as I go over it with a fine toothed comb. It will be ten chapters long, I think. This will be Seddie, by the way. Thank you for reading!**

**Disclaimer: If iCarly were mine I'd keep Nathan Kress in my pocket like a hamster. **

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Ninth grade, a new year, a new set of classes, a new pair of pants. I'm not going to lie, the new pants are a pretty big deal for my mom. I step into the classroom of my new elective, see Shane, and slip into a chair beside him.

"Here's that ADAT Optical cable you lent me last year, Freddie" Shane pushes a coil across our table in my direction, not making eye contact.

"Um, thanks, and you know, I'm really sorry about what happened with Sam and Carly." I take the initiative, stowing my cable in my new backpack. Shane hadn't spoken to any of us after his accident last year, preferring a new set of friends. But the fact that he had returned my stuff gave me hope.

"Don't, don't even say their names." He shudders, but sort of cracks me a grin at the same time.

"But hey, we're in photography together, can we at least be class friends? I swear I will never introduce you to any other girls for as long as I live." I put my hand over my heart and smile, because Shane is nodding in agreement.

In walks a woman who I assume to be our teacher. She scans the classroom with a tired gaze, and turns around to write "PHOTOGRAPHY" on the board, with "MRS. GREY" beneath it. Last year when picking our electives our counselors had recommended we find a class that related to what we wanted to do professionally, and I was lucky because iCarly made me realize how much I loved cinematography. So one semester of photography it was. With any luck I will get to show off the sweet new digital SLR I have stashed in my backpack. My thoughts wander back to reality as Mrs. Grey begins speaking.

"Welcome to photography one oh one, kids. I know you all know how to take a picture with your phones, and photoshop your faces onto naked people, but in this class, we will be using exclusively film. Black and white film. We will be developing the negatives and printing the photos entirely by hand. You will learn how to use a film camera. You will learn how to use a darkroom appropriately. You will come to appreciate the unique qualities of film, and understand the difference between a picture and photography." Mrs. Grey is handing out syllabuses to everyone as she gives her well-rehearsed speech, her eyes lighting up and her voice rising as she reaches the conclusion. But my heart has fallen out of my chest. Film? Black and white? What is this, the eighteenth century?

The rest of the class is your usual first day waste of time. I'm too busy worrying about what my mother will say about the idea of me interacting with developing chemicals to pay much attention, but I do notice the final project assignment.

_"The students will each present nine carefully chosen images in a thoughtful series of a person, place or thing that he or she finds fascinating. The students are expected to work on this final project throughout the semester, in order to show a progression of his or her subject as well as his or her developing skills as a photographer."_

Brilliant! This will be the single best excuse to stare at Carly I have ever had. Sure, filming for iCarly is pretty good, but I have to pay attention to Sam, too, and deal with all of the sound and multiple cameras at once. I'm pretty sure I can convince her to pose for me, if it's for school.

When the bell rings, I wave goodbye to Shane and head to lunch, my mind spinning with possibilities. My stomach is grumbling too, and I smile to myself because I remembered to keep my lunch with me at all times. If I didn't, Sam would break into my locker and steal it before I had a chance.

"Whatup, Fredster?" She raises her chin in my general direction as I plunk down across the lunch table from her, but she's too caught up with her cold fried chicken to look at my face. Unwrapping my sandwich and apples, I contemplate briefly the fact that Sam has managed to preserve an entire lunch table for herself despite the cafeteria being packed. On the first day, too! Her reputation has lived on through the summer, and I'm perversely grateful as I spread my lunch out in front of me.

"Puckett, of all the joints in all the towns in all the world…Hey I was gonna eat that!" I cry as Sam brazenly steals an apple from under my nose. "I'm a growing young man and I need my vitamins, Sam." My arms are crossed in front of me.

"What? You got two of them. That means one is for sharing." At least she bothers to speak to my face as she bites into my apple.

"Anyway, where's Carly? I need to talk to her about something."

"Sam, how was your first day of school? Suckish as usual, Freddie, thank you for asking." She's staring pointedly at me, now, but I'm busy waving Carly over as she emerges from the lunch line.

"Hi guys. They have ham on the chef salads! I got Sam one." Carly smiles widely as Sam pounces the salad like a wolverine and leans into me, "Look, she's eating vegetables." She whispers conspiratorially, and sits down next to Sam.

I figure, no time like the present. "Carly, will you be the subject of my final in photography class? I'd have to take pictures of you until winter break."

"Um…" Carly seems hesitant, her fork hovering over her salad. Awkwardness reigns until Sam tries to steal Carly's ham and turkey slices and Carly smacks the back of Sam's hand. "What's the assignment about, and why would it involve you taking pictures of me?"

"I have to take photos of something or someone that fascinates me," I pull out the syllabus and direct her to the end of the document, "and I figured that I'm always taking video of you for iCarly, so why not just do some still photography while I'm at it. It's a sure way to keep up my grade." Ah, that one works. Carly's got a weak spot for good grades.

Sam is moaning like she's got a stomach ulcer or something. "Carls, you know this is just some freakish plot of his to get you to pose in creepy ways for him. He'll probably photoshop your head onto naked people's bodies."

I laugh, maybe a bit nervously, remembering Mrs. Grey's speech opener. But luckily, Carly is elbowing Sam in the gut and saying "I'm game, Freddie. But I don't know that I'm so 'fascinating' as all that." Relief floods through me and the rest of lunch is spent peacefully discussing iCarly ideas. Sam's got a brilliant one involving the suspension of Gibby in Jello, but I'm not about to tell her that.

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Day one of school is now complete. I linger by my locker, packing up my things and waiting for Sam and Carly to head out so I can get a ride home with my mom without Sam making fun of me. I sidle into the passenger's seat next to Mom and prepare for the first day barrage. It's tradition, of course.

"Sweetie, how was it? Did your pants stay clean? Was gym okay or are we going to have to get some notes again? Did you wash your apples twice before eating them? Do we need to buy anything for your classes?" I let the questions wash over me, nodding where appropriate, but latch onto that last one.

"Actually, we need to go to the camera store on Myrtle Street." I explain about the film debacle as we drive on. Mom is a little concerned about the developing chemicals.

"Freddie, promise me that you will never wear your new pants on photography days. That stuff can bleach, and eat through the flame retardants I spray on."

"Mom…"

"Promise me!"

By the time we get to the store I've made up my mind to take the black and white and film problems in stride. Everyone who is really good at something has to start at the most basic level, right? Master chefs start with learning how to chop vegetables, martial arts masters start with learning how to stand still, and I will be a cinematography master by learning about ISO and f-stops. Yes! It is a plan, and one that conveniently involves me and Carly spending more time together. By the time I've gathered everything on my list and convinced my mom that we can afford it if I return my new digital camera, I'm jubilant.

Two hours later, my plan is working brilliantly. I'm at Carly's and we're rehearsing for tomorrow's show. I've figured out how to load the film into my new camera, despite Sam insisting it will burst into flames if I take a picture of myself. Sure, the first few images on the roll will be blurry shots of my face an arm's length away, but the next thirty are all of Carly and she's soaking up the attention like a sponge.

We had decided to use the swings again, in combination with a bubble machine on loan from Socko. Carly is trying desperately to keep from laughing and get through her bit, but a combination of relief from the first day of school being over and the sheer silliness of the scene is getting to her. A mermaid who is afraid of bubbles is a story of tragedy and woe, but every time she is supposed to scream in terror, she starts giggling instead, her green lame costume crinkling as she bends over and clutches onto the swing chains for support.

Because it's a rehearsal, I snap photos all I want, and the scene with the bubbles and the iCarly lighting is too great not to fill a roll. According to Mrs. Grey, though, usually the last few frames are lost when someone inexperienced is loading the film, so for the thirty-sixth shot I take a picture of Sam. She's got her hands on her hips, watching me take pictures of Carly with such disapproval. If her eyes rolled any more they would pop out of their sockets. I don't think she notices me, she's too busy being annoyed with me instead.

The next photography class we have, I'm staring at my negatives and growing increasingly angry with myself. Every single shot of Carly is a horrible blur. Apparently there is this thing called shutter speed that I had forgotten about, and all the movement with swings and reflective material didn't work so well. I didn't shoot any digital video of the whole thing, either. There is one acceptable image on the roll, the thirty-sixth, of Sam. To my surprise, she's looking straight at me.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N Oh my goodness guys, thank you for all of your positive feedback! What a great way to start the day, I tell you what. Don't be afraid to criticize me, too, okay? I relish the feedback no matter what. Oh, and apologies to anyone who doesn't understand the various photography terms I use. I was a photo minor in college and have loads of darkroom memories, so I'm writing from experience here, and I figure you don't want to be bored by learning basic photo terminology. Most likely it doesn't matter in the long run, anyway, because this story is about people and symbols, not technology.**

**Disclaimer: iCarly is not mine and thank god it isn't because that would be hopelessly boring television.**

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It's a week into school when Sam gets into detention level trouble with a new teacher. Carly and I are relaxing against our lockers while we watch Sam spray painting hers a vivid orange and yellow, a can of paint in each hand. She's doing a little dance, singing a little song while she defaces school property, and we don't bother to stop her.

"What's on the film this time, Freddie?" Carly inquires as I stash the rolls in my pocket. I hadn't shot any more of her since the screw up with shutter speed last week, figuring it would be a waste of film.

"Fruit. Thirty-six still shots of fruit." I'm not going to even try taking a picture of anything moving until I can remember if an f-stop is bigger if it's higher or lower in number.

"Please don't tell me there are any bananas involved, or at least that you ate them all afterward." I look questioningly in her direction and she continues. "Oh, Spencer's decided to construct a giant banana in our living room. It's…pungent."

I send Carly a winning smile as Sam's interrupted in her painting by the art teacher, Mrs. Filson, walking down the hall.

"So I guess the last thing you'll want is a lovely eight by eleven print of bananas in black and white." Carly rolls her eyes and shakes her head. "I'd title it _Bananas in Repose_." My hands are spread out in front of me, framing my imaginary title, but they're really framing Sam's confrontation with Filson.

"Filson, you can't give me detention for creating art!" Sam argues.

"It's school property, and even if I do agree that the colors brighten up this hallway, it's against the rules."

"I was only doing it because I couldn't remember which one was my locker. I had to break open all the ones in this row before I found mine every day last week." She points with her can of orange spray paint at all of the battered locks in a line leading to her glistening locker door. Mrs. Filson's eyes widen at Sam's sheer audacity, so instead of responding she just plucks the paint out of Sam's hands, gives them to me, grabs Sam by the shoulder, and pushes her in the direction of the principal's office.

"Sam really doesn't get the concept of going too far, you know?" Carly brings me back with a poke of her shoe on my calf. I stash the paint in my locker, knowing it'll be gone by the time I get back from class.

"Yeah. I'll see you after school, right?" I'm rushing down the hall, trying not to be late for photography.

"Sure. You can help Spencer fit his banana in the elevator. I hope it doesn't turn brown before his gallery show!"

The darkroom is crowded, jam packed with students trying to develop their film all at once. There are too many students for this to work, because off of the main darkroom branches only sixteen tiny closet sized rooms with projectors in them, which is where you go to spool your undeveloped film. I'm only a minute late, and Mrs. Grey doesn't dock my grade, but I can't get into the darkroom in time.

"You'll just have to come in after school to get things done." she tells the small group of us who were left out. We spend the rest of the class reviewing things like film grain and shutter speed, and when Mrs. Grey needs an example of the latter, she plucks my contact sheet from the mermaid disaster out of a folder on her desk.

"Where'd you get that?" I ask in a strangled sort of voice.

"The trash, where you threw it. I know you think you messed up but it's a wonderful example, Freddie." Mrs. Grey is smiling mischievously and I wonder how long it will be until I can live this down. I decide to spend as much time as I can in the darkroom after school so that I can stop screwing up so much, and before I know it class is over.

I say goodbye to Shane who comes out of the darkroom smelling of developer at the last minute, and head out the door, but Mrs. Grey stops me. "Hey, Freddie, thanks for being so cool about using your contact sheet in class today."

"Oh, sure, yeah." I really just want to get to lunch, and I fidget nervously with the focus on the lens in my hands.

"The last picture on that roll, though, I just wanted you to know that it looks like an amazing shot, and I really want you to print it." She's pointing at the lone image of Sam, and I emit a strange sort of strangled noise from the back of my throat.

"I'm going to be late, Mrs. Grey. I'll see you in the darkroom after school." I make up the excuse, because can you really be late for lunch, and hightail it out of there. I call Mom asking her to pick me up after her hospital shift a little later than usual and fumble my way through the rest of the day's classes.

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Staying late after school is strange. Everything is quiet except for the roving music of the janitor's boombox, and the occasional hall filled with a club of laughing kids or rehearsing cheerleaders. When I get into the photography classroom, Mrs. Grey is busy sweeping the cuttings off the darkroom floor and cleaning up the detritus of a day's worth of uncaring students. "Freddie? You're the only one here. Do you think any of your classmates will show up?" She's wearing all black, so in the red safelight of the darkroom she's just a floating head with glasses and a broom, until my eyes adjust. I tell her I'm not sure, and she grins and says in that case she'll be popping out for a snack in ten minutes, and to not set anything on fire. Mrs. Grey is turning out to be one of those teachers that treats you like you have an actual brain in your head; I find it a refreshing change.

Ten minutes later, I'm locked in a tiny, pitch black room, trying desperately to spool my roll of fruit photos. It's a little too warm, and the acrid smell of photo chemicals is tickling my unaccustomed nose. The only sound is the crunching and crinkling of my negatives, and the low susurrations of my repeated swearing. If I can't even make a good print of a bunch of pears because the negatives are all bent from my ineptitude, Mrs. Grey is going to stop thinking I've got any neurons at all. The walls are so close, I lean against the door and can feel my elbows rubbing on the walls to each side of me. I feel a bead of sweat trickle down my nose.

BANG! "Freddie, I know you're in here!" I scream, a girly high pitched scream, and drop my negatives on the dusty floor. Sam's fist had just come in contact with my door and the vibration had gone straight through to my back.

"Sam! Don't ever do that again!" I'm breathing too fast, and try to regain my composure while I listen to Sam's laughter at my scream through the door. "And don't you dare pick this lock because the light will ruin my film." I'm kneeling on the floor now, groping blindly around to find my negatives.

"Oh, Freddo, you know how to make a girl feel welcome." She's got to be less than six inches away from me, and I know I'm not out of line in keeping my butt pressed against the door to keep her from pushing it open and ruining my film for good.

"Aren't you supposed to be in detention?" I gently blow on my film, trying to get the worst of the floor dust off of it.

"Sure, but Filson is such a pushover, I just asked if I could get a drink of water and I was out of there. Anyway, your mom is coming to pick you up after you're done here, right?" Ah, there is her reason for being within fifteen yards of me.

"Yeah," I begin begrudgingly. "I suppose you want a ride to Carly's." The film is spooling and I'm nearly done! I guess I just need to not think about it so much. "But you know I'll be here for at least a half an hour. Do you really want to hang out in the darkroom for that long, with me? You could just walk home instead."

Sam yawns, a huge lion's roar of a yawn. "But I'm sooooo laaaazy, Fredward. I'll be outside taking a nap. This place stinks."

I love the way she just assumes I'll come find her after I'm done here. At least she didn't need to insult me. Maybe it's something to do with the darkness. If she can't see my face, maybe she won't be incensed to rudeness. All the same, I wait until I'm certain she's gone to leave my projector room, film canister clutched tightly in my hand.

Agitate, agitate, agitate. Don't ever let anyone tell you that developing film by hand is fun. I think Mrs. Grey must be at least partially off her nut because when I ask her about the possibility of playing some music while we're agitating our film, she just laughs, and recites some Zen koan to me. Thankfully, my fruit photos have come out alright, and Mrs. Grey peers at them as I hang them up in the drying closet in long, wet strips.

"Freddie, I think you've got an eye for composition." She compliments me and it puts me off guard. Maybe she doesn't notice the dust and hair all over my negatives, or the big crinkle on the twenty-seventh frame. "Try more still-life for next week, definitely. But something a little more innovative than fruit, okay?" I blush lightly and make my way out the door, loading some new film on my way outside.

I head over to our tree and wait for Mom to show up. A big oak tree grows just out front of the school, and each year a group claims it as their own. This year, we were officially in high school, and somehow that arbitrary distinction allowed Carly, Sam and myself to claim it in the name of our eclectic group of friends. There's a lump on the other side of the trunk, and I realize it's Sam, true to her word, passed out asleep in the sun.

Her skin is smooth and her hair is shiny, and she is absolutely still. I'm still worried about the difference in f-stops, and exposure time in full sunlight is something I've not got the hang of yet, so I sneak about ten shots of Sam. Maybe one of them will come out with the right exposure, I think wryly to myself. I meter my exposure off of the neutral blue of her cute shoes with the little skulls on them, and hope she doesn't wake up at the sound of the shutter clicking. Her eyelids flutter as I zoom in on the curve of her cheek, so I hastily stow my camera and make a loud groaning noise.

"Aaugh, you made me drop my film and it came out all dusty!" I shout unnecessarily at her from the other side of the tree.

"Whatever, where's your mom?" She stretches, and begins rooting around in her hoodie pocket for what turns out to be a Fatcake, and takes a bite. "Good nap." she mumbles to herself through her chewing.

Mom chooses that moment to show up, and in no time at all we're home. I spend the rest of the afternoon shoving Spencer's quickly browning banana into their elevator, and the evening slogging through the mountain of homework it seems you get once you hit high school. It's not until I'm lying in my pajamas, trying to get some sleep, that I realize I hadn't taken one picture of Carly in a week. My plan needs more dedication!


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N Thank you everyone for your continuing feedback. I understand now why fic writers can so easily get needy for reviews; I've totally been refreshing my email like every few hours to see if I've gotten a new one. I just finished watching the new episode, iPie, which was SO SILLY oh my goodness! It had two really great Seddie moments, too. This chapter is about as far away from the silliness spectrum as I'm going to get, and as I sit down to write it I'm really not in the right mood. Damn iCarly, making me all happy! A bit of a shorter chapter today, but there is what I would consider some fluff, so that makes up for it, right?**

**Disclaimer: I don't own iCarly and if you sue me you would be suing an unemployed art major. Jank move, lawyers. Jank. Move.**

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Spencer is lying on his back on his kitchen table, a bowl of Sugarclusters resting on his stomach. The early Tuesday morning sun is slanting through the Shay apartment windows and the only sound after I announce my arrival is the crunching and smacking noises emitting from Spencer's mouth. He waggles a hello to me with his spoon.

"I'm not even going to ask, because your answer isn't going to make sense to me." I stand in front of his upside-down face as he hastily chews and swallows, wondering where the girls are. If they're still asleep, they're going to be late for school, and I am definitely not waiting for Carly to decide on blush versus bronzer or whatever.

"If you've come to collect your girls," Spencer replies while trying to hang his spoon on his nose, "you can't. They've been at Sam's the whole night, helping her mom with some fungal infection. Sam got a call about it yesterday. Carly texted me earlier though; they'll be at school."

I back away slowly from Spencer, who has resumed his bizarre breakfast routine, and head through the beginning of a sun shower to school. Clouds are gathering in the distance and it looks to be a typical damp late September Seattle day. I open my sky blue umbrella and munch on my bagels with grape jelly. I'd brought one for Sam so she wouldn't steal mine, and now I had an extra. Luckily, I'm hungry.

The girls are gathering their books for their morning classes when I reach our hallway of lockers. Sam's locker is still a bright yellow orange mess, but she's struggling with a big black umbrella, whacking it against the floor until it's become a bit mangled. Carly is leaning against her locker door with a glazed look on her normally animated face.

"Good morning, Carly." I approach her with a cocked eyebrow. "How was Sam's place?"

Carly just looks at her feet. "Sam owes me so bad right now, Freddie. So, so bad."

Maybe I'd ask her to pose for some photos later today, and take her mind off of what must have been a traumatic evening. I turn around to ask Sam if her mom is okay, but all I see is her back retreating away from me. I didn't even get a chance to say good morning to her, or defend myself from her daily morning critique of my sartorial choices. I shrug, nod my head to Carly, and head to math.

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Eight hours later, after the school day is officially over, my eyes are watering slightly from trying to focus my prints. I'm in the darkroom, locked into a projector room again, staring at the results of this weekend's attempt at following Mrs. Grey's suggestion for more interesting still-life subject matter.

In a move that had both shocked and appalled my mother, I'd photographed the contents her first aid kit. I had laid out and arranged everything like some sort of hypochondriac's mosaic tabletop. Syringes made fringed borders, bandages fanned out like sun symbols, pills meticulously filled the grout between scissors and swabs. Mom had nearly burst into tears seeing her precious first aid kit gutted open like that, but she forgave me when I put absolutely everything back in its place, twice, just to show her that I could. Hopefully the gleaming curves of tweezers and the contrasting shapes of inhalers and hypodermic needles would meet Mrs. Grey's approval. I'm trying to focus a particularly cluttered image featuring an arrangement of translucent cough drops when I hear Sam's voice filter through the low burbling of the water bath flowing along beside the print developing trays.

"Hey Fredward, you still in here?" There is a quiet knock, but she doesn't try to open the door.

"Ditch Filson again?" I don't bother to stop my work, expecting her to have faked a fainting spell or something to get out of her Tuesday detention.

"Actually, detention's over. You've been in here for ages." Maybe it's because of the door separating us, or the darkness, but as I consult my watch with some surprise, Sam suddenly changes the topic of conversation. "Your mom is a nurse." she states matter-of-factly.

"Your mom is a certified nutjob." I flippantly shoot back.

"We're still talking about your mom as far as I can tell, Benson." Her voice is clear and the use of my last name tells me that I'm talking to Serious Sam, a rare creature indeed. I swallow, and try to reply tactfully.

"Yeah, she's a nurse. Do you suddenly have an issue with that?" I set the timer and expose my paper for the seventeen seconds it needs.

"No," Sam begins slowly. "I was just wondering what it must be like, with her always knowing how many different, gruesome ways there are for you to die."

Seeing them, too, I think to myself. Sam isn't done, though.

"Does it get to her, or was she just born like that? Do you know?"

So I walk out into the darkroom to develop the handful of prints I had exposed, not answering her increasingly morbid train of speech. There is the smatter of rain that covers the quiet while I agitate the photos in the developer, and suddenly Sam's hair is dangling dangerously close to being agitated as well.

"What the hell do you think you are doing?!" she demands, shocked. I have, without pausing to consider the violent ramifications, reached behind her, gathered her hair, and wrapped it in a knot with a pen like I'd seen countless long-haired girls in my class do.

"If you dip your hair in developer you'll have to cut it off to get the smell out." I hastily explain, quoting the photography syllabus. Sam is shooting me a glare and I almost get shoved into the wall, but my prints are developed and I shift to tend to them and dunk them in the stop-bath before all my hard work turns pitch black. Sam leans over and peers into the tray as I shove them around with the little rubber-tipped tongs.

"This, this is what it's like to have my mom know what you were talking about before." I pick up the previous conversation and gesticulate to my photos. "I don't remember a time when I didn't know intimately all of the diseases I was most susceptible to at any given time." She's looking at a print filled with flowers arranged out of syringes. Her eyebrows sort of rise, and she sort of nods, humming a hushed affirmative.

After that, Sam is quiet except for some snide comments about how I have no friends I could use for subjects so I had to turn to "Madam Neosporin and Old Mr. Tongue Depressor" instead. She rests against the far darkroom wall, watching my photos slowly swirl around in the final wash.

Sam and I are walking home through the mid-afternoon rain, my prints safely on the drying rack. "Isn't your Mom going to pick us up?" she asks, frowning from under her bent black umbrella.

"No, actually she's working the afternoon shift today. I was going to walk." I turn to her, looking smug.

"So you mean I stayed extra late after detention for nothing? I have to get myself to Carly's under my own power? What is wrong with the world?" She's shouting into the wind.

I smile wryly at her as we set out among the drizzle. The clouds have blocked the sun, but luckily the street lamps are on early in the fall. My camera hangs heavily around my neck and the plastic body of it clacks as it smacks gently against the metal football pin I have on my chest. After a few minutes of peace, my curiosity gets the better of me. "Don't you have to go home and help deal with your mother's fungus? Why are you going to Carly's?"

"Hey, I'm not the one with an invasion of spores. It's not really my problem, is it?" She shrugs, looking straight ahead.

I'm sort of appalled, but then again I'm a completely different person from Sam in every conceivable way. If Mom were hurt or sick, I would be grief stricken. Funny, I think, how she's never been either. I snort quietly to myself. Mom must hide it well, and I must be really unobservant. Everybody gets sick once in a while. I risk another question due to Sam's unexpectedly compliant nature today.

"Sam, how come your mom is always so sick all of the time?" I'm tentative, and my weight is shifted to duck an attack from her umbrella as soon as possible.

Instead of an immediate smack upside my head, Sam pauses to consider my question, possibly contemplating how best to riposte. One finger winds through a mist-dampened curl.

"Because she doesn't know how to take care of herself. Unlike me, of course. And, she thinks everything awful is the End of the World, while, on the other hand, I learned how to jump in puddles for…maximum splash!"

She runs away from me then, down the sidewalk at her customary lightening speed. Her umbrella catches the wind and she lets it fly out behind her – it's not like a little wet bugs her. I'm a bit terrified at myself for what I do next. Maybe I'm in a daze because Sam has just made extremely apparent that she understands the concept of metaphor.

I snap a picture of her, haloed in the lamplight and the mist, and when I see the print drying on the rack in class, it's like she's rising on a glowing platform, splattering upwards with light. That's the puddle she's jumping in, abandoned in her glee.

After my brief dalliance with insanity I plod over to her with her umbrella in tow. We make an exchange, me with the umbrella and her with the pen that had shook out of her hair with the jump.

"This isn't going to do us much good." she says, and I think she's referring to my waterlogged pen, but when she splashes me I realize, with a sigh, that she meant my umbrella as well as hers.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N What is going on, peoples! It's been a few days since I've put up a chapter, sorry about that, but there was a bit of writer's block going on. These are the blasted middle bits where I just want to cut to the chase but my pre-established steady plot precludes me from doing so. Oh, and also I started playing WoW again. Don't worry, I promise I won't disappear forever. This is a shorter chapter, sorry, but I think we'll all survive.**

**Disclaimer: iCarly is not mine; if it were, Sam would be a Magical Girl named Sailor Oort Cloud, and Freddie would throw roses from his armpits.**

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We've already fallen into a routine by the beginning of October. Mondays, Wednesdays and weekends are a steady mixture of iCarly rehearsals, AV club, and homework. Fridays are the nights we air iCarly. Tuesdays and Thursdays Sam has detention and I stay late, working in the photo lab, until I hear her clomp into the darkroom. Tuesdays this starts earlier; her detentions with the notoriously lax Filson allow her to ditch most of the time. Thursdays Sam spends with Briggs, still serving detentions rolled over from previous infractions in the grade before. I try very hard not to be printing photos of Carly on Thursdays; Sam's mood won't allow for it. When she arrives, we chatter in hushed tones through closed doors in darkness. The discussion is about usual things: webshow plans, the gross substances we ate for lunch, and our mutual interest, Carly. She's been pushier than usual lately, we confer. When Sam spilled a bottle of hot sauce on one of Carly's shirts last night, we had both been kicked out in a rage, leaving us awkwardly leaning in the hallway. I was about to invite Sam in to my apartment when she decided to leave. Carly had been terse all afternoon for no good reason, and Sam tells me that she hadn't seen Carly so rude since her Dad first left her with Spencer.

It's been easier to accommodate Sam than I ever thought it would be. I know she's just using me to hitch a ride in my mom's car, but I couldn't be bothered to switch the days I work in the darkroom just to avoid her. Besides, the T days are the least popular days for darkroom hours, often leaving only Sam, myself, and a fidgeting Mrs. Grey tidying up around us. In fact, I find myself thinking of things to talk about with Sam and making sure to bring them up. I tell myself it's so she won't get bored and tear up the lab for entertainment.

It's a Thursday and I'm pushing my luck. I'm printing pictures of Carly I had shot this Monday. Carly is studying for Algebra 2, looking extraordinarily concerned. Her brows are furrowed and her dark hair frames her face. The contrast between the playful items filling the background of the Shay loft and the heaviness of her textbooks makes for some interesting shots, and I'm pretty sure I'll be using one of these for my final project. Sam had shown up five minutes ago. I was making test strips for a new image when I heard "She will never love you!" through my closed door.

I quickly hustled out to the main area of the darkroom to see Sam sneering discontentedly at the five prints of Carly swirling around in the final wash. Her long hair was already up in a ponytail; she's learning. The frown on her face stayed as she looked up to squint at me in the red safelight. I agitated my test strips and generally ignored her, wishing fervently that I had decided not to wait for her today.

Soon, we discuss Carly's rudeness from yesterday in awkward tones, until Sam's stomach grumbles. I can hear it all the way at the other end of the room, and I wonder if she's knocked something over. But she's just hanging out, framed by giant jugs of vinegar solution in the shadows.

"Let's get a move on, I'm starving." She grabs her stomach and makes pitiful moaning noises. Sam had stolen nearly half of Carly's lunch today, and stopped short only at Mom's bean curd cubes. She could've had those free of charge, too. Normally I'm a stand-up guy, and living around primarily women, I've learned never to call them fat, but Sam is an exception to that rule, too, just like all the others.

"What, afraid you'll lose the Sumo competition or something?" I shoot, lamely, at her wheedling silhouette. I nod my head in the direction of the darkroom exit and gather my soaking prints. We head out to the drying racks together.

"Is there a sumo competition? That would be sweet!"

She's not like other girls, not at all.

* * *

At Carly's there is only frantic energy. We are trying to finish up iCarly plans for tomorrow, Spencer is working for a new gallery show, and the Dorfmans are coming to visit tonight. Spencer is running around trying to gather all of these bouncy balls that had somehow "escaped" before Sam and I arrived, although I suspect it was more along the lines of "he threw them down the stairs to see what would happen."

I'm trying to take pictures of Carly cooking dinner for the Dorfmans. Her disgusting and horrible cousins have ridiculously demanding diets, and I'm quite glad that I've never had to meet them. She is glad that I ask if I can take pictures; she welcomes the distraction from the Dorfman's imminent visit. Carly is in an apron, looking adorably domestic, and has already apologized for kicking us out yesterday. She's playing up the photoshoot, posing with rutabagas and spatulas and generally being great, but Sam keeps interfering. She is demanding nutrition, shouting things like "protein!", and telling Carly she wants to do a sumo segment on the show. She's always in the frame.

"Get out of the frame, Sam! And stop stealing that turkey bacon." I wave my arms ineffectively in her direction.

Carly stops pureeing her turnip stew long enough to teach me something. "Freddie, watch and learn." she says, potato masher in hand. Spinning around in a fluid motion, Carly grabs Sam's hair and tugs her away from the kitchen island.

"Hair! Hair! Hair!" Like magic, Sam is compliant and walks over to check her email. Carly lends me an accomplished face, and I nod in my approval. I manage get some cute shots of Carly in, but while she's cleaning a wooden spoon and complaining that she has nothing to wear for dinner tonight that she can risk getting veggie pudding stains on, Sam creeps back into frame to sneak some gluten free burger bites.

"Sam! Out!" I shout at her to no effect. Spencer chooses that moment to run into the kitchen, his arms full of bouncy balls.

"Seventy four! Just one more and WAUGH!" Slipping on some turnip puree, the balls fly up and everywhere. Spencer is moaning in pain on the floor, Carly is screaming that he broke her soup tureen, and Sam is wailing that her burger bites got covered in veggie pudding. So I do the only thing I can. Grabbing her blonde curls, I drag Sam over to the couch.

"Hair! Hair! Ouch! Hair! Freddie! What was that for?" Sam is incredulous and pouting at the same time, her hands gingerly touching her scalp. I reach into a high cabinet and extricate Carly's emergency jerky, shove it into Sam's face and sit down on the couch next to her.

"Let's just both go home after you've shoveled that into your maw," I say quietly.

"Don't you need more stupid Carly pictures? They'll help you fantasize about how she'll make such a great housewife." Sam asks around a mouthful of jerky. She doesn't say this sarcastically. I suspect that she actually believes what she's saying.

I do need more photos of Carly because I'm not sure any of the earlier ones were good, but she isn't exactly acting the part at the moment. I raise my camera and try a wide angle of the kitchen scene, but it's all a flurry of movement. Later, when I develop the film, I have six gorgeous shots of Sam, sharply in focus, with a haze of bouncy ball induced madness framing her head. She looks so happy, so intent, so rapturous as she slowly chews her mouthful of beef jerky.

"Mmm, terriyakitastic." She smiles blissfully. "Now, let's get out of here before Spencer makes us search for his balls."


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N Thanks for your continuing appreciation of this story, you guys. I'm really blown away by how positively this is being received. I promise you that Point & Click will be completed and online before US Thanksgiving. Then, I can start on my other projects. This has really given me the confidence to write fic ideas I've previously been uncomfortable putting down in a shareable form. Hope you like today's chapter! (Points if you spot the Ned's reference.) I've got the next chapter ready to go, so expect it when I wake up tomorrow!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own iCarly. If you own iCarly, give me a call, cuz I need a job!**

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I'm at my locker, collecting my science books on a Monday morning. I like to think that I've grown reasonably in the past year or so, but the ponderous tomes of Advanced Biology dramatically outsize my wiry fencer's torso. Okay, so maybe it isn't wiry, and maybe I haven't really fenced in a year and a half. I should really start that up again, but my schedule, and my mother, don't allow for it. Maybe I could start bowling with Sam on the weekends at least to help my upper arm strength. I continue to ponder the inadequacies of my flesh when Carly slumps up next to me.

"Hi, Freddie" she sighs dramatically.

"What's wrong?" I ask. She has yet to open her locker, or touch up her lip gloss, or even apply lipgloss, I belatedly notice. She's just plopped against the locker door next to mine, gazing half-heartedly into the distance. I shift the weight of my textbooks, trying to look Very Concerned.

"How do you afford all of your tech stuff? Doesn't your mom give you like, no allowance?"

I think wryly about how, before iCarly, I hadn't had anything to spend my minimal allowance on. It had added up over the years. Having no real friends for the majority of elementary school can have its advantages; they are just long term.

"Mom helps out sometimes when she knows I won't EBay whatever my new gear is to buy a one-way plane ticket to Paraguay." I jostle her shoulder a bit with an elbow, trying to cheer her up. There is a pause in which Carly bites her lower lip, and then:

"I need a job. Spencer's gallery show totally bombed." She looks crestfallen. I think about the seventy five bouncy balls and wonder what in the world Spencer had made that didn't end up charming the pants off of prospective buyers.

"I thought your Dad-" I begin curiously, as Carly had never gone into detail about the financial aspects of her living situation with me, but she cuts me off to explain.

"My dad can pay for the basics, but I want to help out. Spencer doesn't...art well, under the pressure. I need new clothes! If you haven't noticed, I've kind of grown out of a lot of my old ones." Carly gesticulates to her body, and I turn a faint shade of crimson on my neck and ears. I had noticed, of course. I had noticed all of the girls in my class. Over the summer, they must have shipped every girl off to a secret lab where they were injected with growth hormones, or something. Sam and I had discussed this in the darkroom. She complained that changing into uniform in gym class was like a parade of who could afford expensive, stupid bras. Apparently, bra straps with smiley faces were the current trend. Thank god that discussion had taken place in the dark. Now, of course, I knew that Sam had plaid ones. The knowledge haunted me. But back to Carly, who is continuing her explanation and completely ignoring my blush.

"Also I want to get Spencer a Christmas present that I know he'll love." She waits for me to respond, so I oblige her with an inquisitive look. She goes on, "I'm getting him a gross of fake ears. A hundred and forty four plastic ears."

"Um, allright?" I wonder what her point is, but she's obviously eager to share it with me, because she's cheered up a bit.

"He can make a sculpture out of them right after Christmas, and call it _Happy New Ear_!"

My mouth drops slightly at this, but I can't say it isn't on par with Carly's usual humor. And Spencer would love to get a gross of fake ears. After I shake off the awful pun, I'm thinking that Carly is pretty much an angel for loving her brother so much. "You know, I think Groovy Smoothie is hiring." I suggest.

The bell rings just then, making the two of us nearly tardy. Carly rushes to get her math books and asks me to wish her luck when she checks out the Groovy Smoothie after school, and I'm off down the hallway in a dash.

I don't stop to wonder where Sam might be, because I know she's cutting first period. Sunday night we had done a Wake Up Spencer, and, true to form, she had used it as a perfect excuse to justify skipping first period this morning. On my way to science I pat the toast and packets of jam I've got stashed in my pants pockets. I've learned that she is much more amenable to letting my homework stay dry if she's had some carbohydrates and sugars before second period, and Fatcakes seem to make her...aggressive. Carly didn't know that I was feeding Sam so often, and Sam acted unsuspicious of my repeated gifts of nutrition. It has become common for her to dive into my pockets, unasked, when she sees me in the hallways. Considering this, I move the toast from my back pocket as I walk into Biology with Mr. Sweeney.

* * *

The week progresses with a surprising lack of crazy happenings. I start considering the possibility of convincing my mother to let me have some free weights in my bedroom, despite their potential as deadly blunt weapons. Sam consumes an entire loaf of our bread in three days via toast and jam. Carly comes to school wearing the same thing two days in a row and is the only one mortified about it. Today is Wednesday, and it's shortly after school has been let out. I'm staying late instead of heading straight home because that day in Photography Mrs. Grey had given us a new assignment that was dependant on the weather.

It was kind of a dumb assignment, Shane and I had agreed. We had to take shots of objects reflected and floating in puddles. Yesterday there had been a proper squall, so the Seattle streets were filled with puddles glistening in the mid-afternoon sun. The purpose was to teach us about focal depth, evidently. I was confident enough in my knowledge and general affinity for gadgetry by now to be sort of flippant about the execution of this assignment, so I decided to blast through it. I walked out to our oak tree in front of the school campus, and started snapping shots of the branches reflected in the puddles clustered around its roots, with a few yellowing leaves floating on top. We had to have three prints by next week, and I was expecting to have all of those shots on one roll of film in about ten minutes.  
I'm staring through my viewfinder, a bit bored, when Sam runs up behind me and whaps me on the back of my head, but I resolutely keep taking pictures of some debris in the gutter running along the sidewalk by our tree. She comes around and stares at me through my camera's lens.

"Ready to go plan the show?" She shoots me an easy grin, likely because she thinks I'm too engrossed in the muck at my feet to notice.

"I'll have you know, that hurt. And we can't. Carly is at her first day of work right now."

"Work? Like, for money?" Sam's voice is deadpan.

"Yeah. At the Groovy Smoothie. She gets a discount and almost no commute! Didn't she tell you?"

"No! First I heard about it." She's peeling apart a few oak leaves behind me, fidgeting restlessly.

Ohoh, I'm surprised, I finally heard something from Carly first. She'd texted me last night, grateful for the tip. Evidently they had hired her the next day, having watched how well she would always clean up after Sam on our visits to the shop. I'm gloating to myself when I realize that this is Sam I'm being polite to, so I gloat out loud instead. After I'm done, there is a pause.

"Why does she need the cash, anyway?" Sam wonders out loud.

"She told me that, too! Hah! I know something about Carly you don't!" I have devolved to a really childish level, but damn it feels good.

This whole time I've been rhythmically taking photos of puddles, not making eye contact with Sam, so it takes me by surprise when she wrenches me around. A second later I'm on the damp ground, face throbbing. Perversely, I'm more concerned with the grass stains on the back of my polo shirt than how I had gotten there.

"You don't know anything, Benson." She's standing over me, holding my camera uncomfortably in her elegantly fingered left hand. "Didn't want to harm your precious equipment, but I figured your face was fair game." Sam toes my bent knees with her elaborately painted chucks, my legs' slow writhing obviously annoying her. She lowers my camera onto my chest, dropping the strap last, and turns tail, running to her own neighborhood for once.

When I develop my roll of puddle shots the next day, there's a surprise waiting for me to find it. Frame twenty one is Sam's terrifying grimace, her fist a blur to the side. She must have hit the shutter button when she was protecting my camera from my caucus with the asphalt.

I gingerly touch my bruised jawbone as I look at the negative. Sam's priorities will never make sense to me.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N This was actually the first chapter I ever wrote of this story. The idea just showed up fully formed in my head. Originally, this and the rest of Point & Click were going to be separate stories, but after carefully outlining everything I realized that it would all work out. I'm normally afraid to write any fanfic things digitally, preferring to keep my fic ideas on paper, written by ballpoint pen in lamplight at 5 am on yellow legal pads, but this chapter latched itself in my brain and forced me to get it down in digital format. After that, it was a simple step to register a account and get cracking. Thanks so much for your positive responses!  
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**Disclaimer: iCarly isn't mine but I think Crusherella might be original! :O  
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Grade school is troublesome when Halloween lands on a Monday. The weekend was a blur, a straight shot from Friday's iCarly, hurried costume creation on Saturday, decoration 'Spencer style' on Sunday morning, a terrible late-evening candy run on Sunday night thanks to Spencer's forgetfulness (that I vowed never to speak of again), all the way on through this Monday morning when I was greeted by my mom and the surprise costume she had made for me.

"I know last year you didn't love being a wizard, sweetie. So this year I asked Spencer what he thought you might think was cool." Really, I love her, I do. But right now, the only reason I'm still in this getup is sheer defiance at Sam's reaction to it this morning. Spencer, it seems, had been a bit clever for once, and suggested something to do with fencing. A swashbuckler, some sort of adventurer-pirate-rascal, or so my mom tells me. Of course she interprets things loosely and comes out with something a lot more Errol Flynn than Johnny Depp.

And so, I'm currently backed into a corner trying very hard not to think about how much these tights are chaffing, because I should be using my enormous brain to rescue Carly from the enthusiastic wrath of Crusherella. Come to think of it, my fake earring is itching, too.

Like I said before, Monday Halloweens mean trouble. The school day is not half over and it has already turned to chaos as teachers give up the battle and opt for a party day instead. Sam had gotten her sugar induced haze on early, back on Saturday, and it hasn't stopped yet.

"Freddie! Where did that ugly sparkly blue dress go that we used for the magic pudding fairy segment?" It was Saturday, Carly was at work, and Sam was calling me on my phone unsolicited, a most rare event.

In typical fashion, Sam had never spoken about her punching me again, and somehow we had gone on exactly the same. I sort of felt like I deserved it, well about a fifth of it, maybe a flick to the forehead, because I had been an ass. Sam and Carly were very best friends and rubbing Sam's face in a problem with what might be the only thing she cares about more than ham was wrong of me. And with Carly at work a lot, Sam and I had to coordinate better to get iCarly done. I missed Carly terribly, and jamming all our iCarly planning after dinner or on Sundays and Mondays was turning out to be a lot harder than Carly had originally thought. The show we had just done the day before felt half baked, and Carly had called a moratorium on all fruit jokes.

"When you've been blenderizing fruit all day, you try telling me what's so funny about raspberries on your fingers!" Carly had exclaimed, collapsing on the carseat. Fruit related humor is like, half our repertoire. I have no idea what we'll do this Friday. But this past Saturday I was unwinding from a mediocre show when Sam called, demanding answers.

"Hello Sam, how gross it is to hear your voice, too. The blue dress? With the rest of the iCarly props, in the Shay's closet in a bin." I grinned, remembering iCarly's pudding fairy: a cautionary tale about the trouble that comes with the power to make pudding appear at will. It has been a segment Sam had invented purely as an excuse to make more pudding than she could possibly eat.

There was a knock on my door exactly the same time as I heard Sam demand "open up!" over the phone. She wasted no time in grabbing my wrist and dragging me across the hall to Carly's place.

"Spencer, you home?" I called as we let ourselves in. No response came, so Sam beelined to the kitchen and checked for leftovers.

Five minutes and two huge meatballs later, I was leaning against the iCarly studio window, admiring Sam's backside and ducking all the props that were flinging my way. Sam was leaning over into a giant grey storage bin labeled _iCarly: Miscellaneous II_.

"Sam, what do you need all this stuff for, exactly?" I eyed the lineup of objects she had assembled on the floor:

~One ripped and too small neoprene wetsuit from Spencer's ill-fated golfball retrieval scheme.  
~One large container of craft glue.  
~One stapler, green with sparkly stickers.  
~Two pairs of flipflops, white.  
~One and a half bags of gold foil-wrapped hard candies.  
~Blue shoelaces.  
~One girl's highschool wrestling singlet, black.  
~One sparkly tiara.  
~One chunky combat boot, black.  
~Two pairs of scissors.  
~One tube of gold paint.

"Halloween costume, obviously. Ahah!" Sam tugged and tugged, and finally pulled out the pudding stained blue dress that we had originally come here for. She scratched some dried pudding off a few sequins, frowned thoughtfully, tried licking one, and with a small shudder she tore the big skirt entirely off. Tossing the skirt and a pair of scissors to me, she said "We're making me a Crusherella costume."

The rest of the day was quickly spent. Sam explained to me some of the finer points of women's professional wrestling, including her desire to one day enter the ring as Crusherella: the princess who knows how to keep a grudge.

Steadily the costume took shape. I cut up and attached pieces of the blue dress to the singlet with staples, and painted the lone combat boot gold. Sam cut the wetsuit into a wide, black band that was laced closed with the extra blue shoelace, and stuck together enough flipflops to equal the same heel height as the combat boot. "I can't walk around school with one bare foot, Ms. Briggs will give me detention for asymmetry. But Crusherella has to have lost one of her 'dancing' shoes." Sam explained, as if it were obvious.

The whole time we had been eating the candies and keeping their gold wrappers. Sam's pile was impressive, mine much smaller. They were to be used, I learned, to gild the championship belt she had fashioned out of the wetsuit.

All told it was probably the longest Sam and I had ever gone alone together without her physically harming me in some way. It was fun, too! It felt like we were working on something for iCarly, instead of just for Sam. I didn't tell her, of course, but I thought Crusherella was a really cute idea. I knew by now that cute was not exactly what she was going for.

Then all of a sudden it was dinner time, my mom came looking for me, and Sam passed out in a sugar coma on the Shay's couch. That was all the day before yesterday and I'm wishing more than anything that the sugar coma would come back and claim Sam immediately.  


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Let me paint this picture. Sam is shouting gleefully "Crusherella is no friend to felines!" at Carly, who is dressed as a black cat. Sam is in costume, all blue sequins, gold foil, blonde curls and silver tiara. Her flipflop is firmly planted on Gibby's face as he groans on the ground dressed as a knight. Jeremy is curled up against the lockers beside them, a victim of the fallout from Gibby's throwdown. I am trapped in the corner, wearing tights, a puffy shirt, a striped sash around my waist, a fake earring and a very useless plastic-tipped fencing foil hanging limply by my side. In one hand I have my film camera and in the other I have my feathered tricorn hat.

"Carly, wait, there's-" I cry out lamely, because Sam lets out this crazy growl and suddenly Carly is in the air, held up and spun around by Sam, who now has this manic grin. So instead of being a good Freddie and continuing my warning about Ms. Briggs turning the corner, I snap a quick shot of Crusherella in action, Carly balanced precariously above her head.

"What is this horrible violence? Samanatha Puckett! I should have known it was you and your terrible friends making this racket! You disgust me! Detention! Detention forever!" Ms. Briggs, in full Scottish kilt regalia, is livid, but her face turns even redder as she looks at Sam's feet, where the flipflop has come off. "And extra detention for asymmetrical footwear!"

"Yeah, yeah, Crusherella will get to those detentions in a year when she's served the backlog she's working through now, thanks to you." Sam looks a bit dejected, but continues to talk in third person.

"No no, I know for a fact that you have Mondays and Tuesdays free now that your time with Filson is up." Ms. Briggs smirks and is proud of herself, but suddenly I snap out of it and start really paying attention. If Sam has detention on Mondays, we will have to plan iCarly entirely on Sundays, not to mention Sam was really looking forward to having Tuesdays back for herself. Carly is standing up, trying to explain that it was all a misunderstanding, that Carly was practicing for cheerleading tryouts, but Ms. Briggs is having none of it.

Abruptly I'm left in the hallway with a twitching Gibby, a moaning Jeremy, and a Carly making her "aaw!" noise.

"Aaw! I was just kidding around when I challenged her to a match. Why does Sam have to go flinging me around in the air?"

"Did you see her lunch? It had all the food groups: candy corn, Swedish fish, milk duds, candied fruit slices, and snickerdoodles." I'm counting snickerdoodles as the grain, of course.

"I guess we should be glad she usually just eats too much protein." Carly groans, helping up Gibby.

"More importantly though, Sam can't have detention on Mondays! You're at work every other day; iCarly won't be able to handle it." I gesticulate wildly, becoming more concerned by the second.

"Do you think? I don't know, we can plan on Sunday and rehearse on, um…" Carly's lips thin as she realizes there isn't another day.

"I'll figure something out." I tell her resolutely as she escorts Gibby to the school nurse.

I don't have an idea yet, but I do once I get to photo class. Maybe a quarter of the class has bothered to show up and Mrs. Grey is sitting at her desk eating a lollipop.

"Yes, Freddie?" she asks around her lollipop when I approach her.

"Don't you hate having to dust the darkroom, and change the chemicals, and sweep the trimmings?" I lead in.

"Well, it's part of my job." Here eyebrows go up as she notices my earring. "But it's the worst part."

"What if you didn't have to do any of that on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the rest of the school year?"

Ten minutes later I do feel a bit like a swashbuckling rascal as I burst into the principal's office and shout "Wait! I have an idea!" at Ms. Briggs and Sam. Mrs. Grey walks in behind me and squares off with Ms. Briggs. Sam looks like she's about to open her enormous mouth, so I elbow her sharply.

"Ms. Briggs, would the idea of Sam doing tedious labor, working with harmful chemicals, and cleaning up other kids' trash satisfy your detention guidelines?" I ask her in a strange moment of forwardness.

"The does sound particularly…satisfactory, yes" she responds slowly.

"And such a horrible time would be just as bad as two detentions at once, don't you agree?"

"The way you put it, yes."

"Then it's a deal. Sam will serve half the number of detentions you assign her, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as Mrs. Grey's photo lab assistant." My arms are crossed in front of me.

"That sounds reasonable and productive," interjects principal Franklin. "I'm sure Mrs. Grey can show Sam the ropes in no time."

Ms. Briggs is livid again, but Mrs. Grey puts a placating hand on her shoulder. "Francine, I swear, it is absolutely horrible menial work."

Sam gives me a look that screams "crushcrushcrusherella!!" but I know, deep down, she's relieved. My feelings are confirmed when we're out in the hall a minute later and she thumps me happily on the shoulder.

"I hope you realize two things, Benson."

"Yeah?"

"One, that is still the nerdiest costume I've ever seen, and two, you are so doing all of this photo lab junk." She reaches up and wrenches off my earring, so I'm too busy with the pain of blood rushing back to my earlobe to notice her saying "Keep the tights, though." Sam puts my earring on her own ear and runs off to find Carly to tell her the news.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N Author's note at the bottom.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned iCarly it would make a lot more sense than it currently does. Aren't we all glad I don't own it? **

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Mrs. Grey trusts me, and has gotten used to Sam's presence in the photo lab after school hours already, so she trusts Sam right away to get to work. The Tuesday after Halloween, Sam is set to cleaning trays in the school parking lot with a hose. I'd recommended it, knowing Sam would enjoy that the most of all the darkroom chores. But she comes back, a bit damp, to complain to me that she thinks she's gotten an "autumn sunburn". We part awkwardly, knowing Carly won't be home from work until late.

November progresses. Each week has a pattern to it.

Fridays have never changed, thankfully, and iCarly continues to provide the internet with weird things once a week. Sam and I agree to include Spencer in the show a lot more because Carly usually isn't available to tape extra segments. He has yet to get over his "camera face" as we affectionately call it.

Saturdays are often lonely. Carly works the entire day, but sometimes I'll come over for dinner and take a few shots of her. She's always tired, and we never have fruit kebabs for dessert.

Sundays are homework days, and our primary iCarly planning day. As we soon realize, fitting this only on one day has its downsides. We'll get annoyed with each other, Sam will refuse to leave me alone while Carly and I do civics homework together, and we'll run out of ideas for the show. Normally, we would go to Groovy Smoothie when we run out of ideas, but Carly refuses now. Evidently, her bosses are slowly crushing the life out of the Groovy Smoothie. The latest profit-turning innovation, she reports, is a new slushie machine. "Slushies! A smoothie shop selling slushies! Do you know what that is? That's bunk, is what it is." She tosses her hands up into the air.

Mondays are our only iCarly rehearsals. Since we don't yet know what out viewers will submit by Friday, it's gotten more difficult to set up a plan for the show. We've come to rely more than ever on Sam's improvisations, and Carly begins to take on the roll of straight man. Usually tired from the Monday Blues, it's become common for us to end rehearsal early. Once, I had invited Sam over for dinner, and to my amazement she had accepted. We spent the night consuming my mother's only acceptable dish, spinach lasagna, and watching Batman movies. At bedtime Sam had simply let herself into Carly's apartment with a hairpin and a yawn.

Tuesdays Carly works at the Groovy Smoothie after school, Sam works at the photo lab under Mrs. Grey's instruction, and I work at comprehending the finer points of focal length and film grain. Despite her original threat of making me do all the work, Sam takes to the photo lab well. I know it's at least got to be better than detention with Ms. Briggs, although Sam comes into the darkroom every fifteen minutes or so to complain. Usually, I'll laugh lightly at her pain, and give her a snack. Granola bars, I've found, work better than toast. I'll stay working until her detention time is up, and my mom will give Sam a ride to her house. It had only taken Mom asking Sam once if she'd like a ride there for it to become standard. Sometimes, though, Mom will have an afternoon shift at the hospital, and I'll take the bus with Sam, and go to the Starbucks by her neighborhood. Oddly enough, it never feels awkward to sit next to her, drinking black coffee and not talking, just unwinding a bit and watching the people together.

Wednesdays Carly works and I try to breathe life into the dying AV club. It's three weeks into November when Shane finally accepts the nomination to replace me as president. Sam had helped me convince him. She'd offered to break his legs (again) for me, first, but I had rejected her sweet offer. Then she suggested I tell Shane the truth, that I just didn't have the time to devote to AV anymore, but with a twist; I needed to spend that time with a girl. It had worked. Shane had nodded and winked at me, made a slightly obscene gesture with his hands, and declared himself in charge of AV. My techy compatriots were envious of my fictional nooky, and I was left with a burning sensation in the back of my throat.

Thursdays are much like Tuesdays, but they are a little different than what I'm used to. Previous to somehow getting Sam to spend all her time after school with me on Thursdays, she had been gone a good hour with Briggs in detention. This was when I would print her photos. Some time around October I began to keep track of them, these images of Sam, and I ended up printing them over and over again, until each one was perfect. My mind had partitioned this activity off from the rest of myself. I was still asking Carly to pose for me, I still intended to use Carly as the "fascinating" subject of my final, but so far I had six perfect prints of Sam, rolls of mediocre Carly photo shoots, and maybe one print of Carly that could objectively be called "interesting". So now, my secret Thursday activity was no more. I shifted it to class time, but realized with horror that Sam was now in charge of removing the dry prints from the rack. I'd gone to Mrs. Grey and tried to explain, but found myself tongue-tied. Luckily, she'd nodded in understanding. "You'd like them to be a surprise." she'd said, and offered to cherry-pick them from the drying racks before school ended. They are kept in a folder in her filing cabinet, and hopefully Sam will never get curious about Mrs. Grey's "B's".

* * *

That's my November week, so it should have come as no surprise that Sam had shown up this Thursday and followed me home, complaining all the way.

"Fredward, let's go sneak into the movies." she had suggested from the backseat of Mom's car.

My mother had gasped and shouted "illegal!" as we drove to the Bushwell Plaza.

"Well, at least can we DO something? I didn't want to go home because I'd have to try on a shipment of vintage bikinis with my mom, but now I realize hanging out with you will be way more boring." She flops down horizontally along the backseat of the car, playing with the window that my mother had thoughtfully child-locked shut.

"Maybe you should be glad you have someone willing to spend time with you at all." I suggest, tired of her persistent whining.

Sam pauses ominously in her squirming, sits up, and declares: "Let's visit Carly at work!"

"Oh, yes, that might be fun. Do you think Spencer will be home?" my mother replies. I am distressed, and by the looks of it in the side view mirror, so is Sam. I play with the ISO setting on the camera in my lap as I haltingly try to keep Mom from tagging along with us, but it's too late. We've parked and are soon all knocking on the Shay's door.

Spencer is home, hammering away. To his left is a pile of bottle caps, thousands of them, and to his right is a sculpture of what seems to be the bottom half of a mermaid. He's hammering the caps flat on one half, and epoxying them to the fish tail in an elaborate, scalloped pattern. We'd all shuffled in after we heard his shout of "enter!" and watched him glue his hands to each other with epoxy as he turned around to greet us. We ignored his plight, used to such things by now.

"Do you want to visit your sister at work, Spencer? The children and I are going to have some nutritious snack beverages and thought we might invite you." My mother certainly has a way with words.

"Do I ever!" He runs to grab his scarf, realizes he has no use of his fingers, and bites the scarf with his teeth. I roll my eyes and gently wrap the scarf around his neck as we head out the door. "Thanks, Fredster."

We'd all visited Carly at work individually before, but never in a group like this. I imagine that her eyes are getting wider at our approach. Behind her, huge slushie vats rotate hypnotically in a rainbow of unnatural hues. Beside her stands a thin young man named Jason. His badge proclaims him to be "Assistant Manager" and he's arguing about something with Carly as we walk up to the counter.

"Miss Shay, you don't understand, you have to offer the upsell to every single customer. It doesn't matter if you recognize them as someone who has rejected the upsell before. It's in the manual." He is pedantic, and Carly's exasperation is clearly evident on her face. I'd be exasperated too. Jason is only seventeen and we know him from school, but insists on calling everyone by their title. Carly wrenches away from Jason's attention as Sam walks up and slaps both her hands onto the counter between us.

"Sam! Freddie! Spencer and... Mrs. Benson? What are you doing here?" Carly asks. Jason loudly clears his throat behind her, so Carly continues in a labored voice, "How can I help you have a smooth and groovy day?" She forces a grin and rolls her eyes at me.

"Carls, is this jerk giving you a hard time? I'll take care of him, just let me behind the counter." Sam is ready to vault over and put Jason into a greasy headlock, but Carly glares back at her and she stops.

"May I suggest one of our new slushie flavors? We have RadBerry Bloop and MelonMania, in large and extra-huge." She's turned nearly as pink as her magenta uniform around the collar.

Spencer cuts through the tension. "Hey Sis, can I have a Strawberry Splat, hold the strawberries, with an extra intelligence booster? And, I'll need you to put the straw in, because I kind of glued my hands together just now." His sheepish grin would charm most normal humans, but Jason isn't normal. Carly obviously has a problem that she isn't vocalizing, because her hands are hovering over the touchpad of the cash register.

Jason steps in front of Carly, who is humming in nervousness. "I'm sorry, Mr. Shay, but we no longer allow substitutions or changes to our secret smoothie recipes. May I interest you in our BananaMango Menagerie? It's only a dollar extra."

Spencer's smile falls, so I step in and ask for a RadBerry Bloop. Carly smiles gratefully at me, but Jason glares at her again. "Will that be all, or will your orders be together?" Carly asks under obvious duress.

My mother decides to cut in this time. "Together, please, dear, and I'd like one of those pink flavored things that you kids get. The guava one, I think?"

"Oh, sorry, but we've discontinued the GuavaFruit Fizzes. Er, can I get you something else?"

Throughout these unfortunate exchanges, Sam is standing to the side, with her hands on her hips, quite obviously trying to contain her visceral rage. Her eyebrow is twitching, her jaw is clenching, and any second now she'd going to do something drastic. I consider placing my hand on her shoulder to placate her, but I hold back. This, this is going to be good, I think secretly to myself. I take the cap off of my lens without realizing what I'm doing.

As my mother vacillates between the GuavaGoo slushie or the LycheeFruit Fizz, I decide to try and ask a reasonable question. "Carly, you have all of the ingredients for the Fizzes, and you have guava right there. Why can't you make one?"

Jason interjects, again. "Mr. Benson, I'm sorry but our manual has been rewritten, precluding us from allowing special orders in order to cut costs and maximize profits. It is simply impossible to enter the special charge into our newly refined SmartTech register system." He is about to go on, when Sam rushes the counter, takes a great leap and shouts a battle cry. Suddenly, Jason's been flipped over Sam's shoulder straight into the shockingly green MelonMania slushie machine. He slumps against the valve, knocking it off, and releasing a torrent of the sticky stuff all over his prone form. It clashes brilliantly with his red hair and dribbles over his fuschia visor and onto his shirtfront.

Shenanigans ensue.

My mother is exclaiming oh dear! and trying to get around the counter to help Jason. Spencer belatedly yells for Jason to duck. I'm laughing uncontrollably, and Carly is frozen on the spot. Her eyes catch mine, though, and she says as unaffectedly as possible, "Let me get you that RadBerry Bloop now, Mister Benson." She walks over to the violet slushie machine, toeing her way through the expanding puddle of green on the floor, and tries to turn the valve. It sticks, though, and the second Sam notices her having trouble, Sam hops over Jason's groaning body and unleashes what can only be described as a Judo chop on the vat. It's so shoddily constructed that it bursts open, flooding the whole area with purple slushie.

Jason starts getting up by now, but Mom's gotten to him and is assaulting him with kindness. Spencer is futilely trying to hand Carly some napkins. The afternoon sunset is glinting in through the shop windows. Jason bats my mother's assistance away and shouts at Carly. "Miss Shay, you can't even handle a simple group order! You are fired!"

Carly whips around, flicking RadBerry Bloop all over Jason's face, and shouts right back at him. "You can't fire me because I quit!" and at the same moment, Sam has broken open every color of slushie machine, spilling a spectrum of slippery goo onto the floor, the wall, even the ceiling. Everybody but myself is completely covered in slushie; there is screaming and falling and shivering everywhere I look. I'm taking pictures this whole time, and I know I have my exposure time set short enough and my f-stop open wide enough to catch everything. Sam is laughing uproariously, and lifts up her hands to wipe the slushie out of her eyes. I zoom in on her face, catching the reflection of the horizontal sun glinting in her eyes, the mess coating her entire head and transforming her into some sort of slushie monster, and snap a picture, ending the roll.

Finally I can't take it anymore. I carefully walk away from the mess and put down my camera.

Immediately, I turn around and run towards the chaos. My mother is holding her hands out at me, telling me to stay away, somebody needs to get towels. I point at Sam, who sees me running straight towards her. She's pointing back at me, laughing, shouting "no no wait!" and then I'm vaulting, full-speed, across the counter, screaming something like Banzai! And it's like a fruit flavored Slip'n'Slide all the way to the back of the store; we're tossing slushie at each other and at Jason and Spencer is trying to wipe Carly's face clean while ignoring the rest of her and Sam has fallen over again. I reach down to grasp her hand and help her up, but she just wrenches me down to the floor and my feet slide out from under me and my face is right by her BlueRaspberry Blast elbow and I'm thinking very much that I would like nothing more than to lick it clean right then and there when Carly shrieks.

"Mr. Philter! This isn't what it looks like!" Carly exclaims. We're all frozen in place, Jason still sputtering, as the manager of the Groovy Smoothie comes in from a meeting with the regional heads. Sam and I slowly help each other to our respective feet, and I go to take my mom by the shoulder and help her out from around the counter.

Mr. Philter coughs lightly, disbelieving the sight in front of him. Then, after a moment's absorption, he just says "out." and points toward the door.

Carly goes "aaaaw!" and the five of us huddle together, shaking off the majority of the smoothie on the sidewalk outside. I wipe my hand off on the ground and dash back inside for my camera.

"Guys, I think we're all banned from the Groovy Smoothie from now on." Carly says after we're all clean, huddling beneath Mom's warm, dry towels.

"Worth it!" Sam and I declare simultaneously.

**A/N Hey guys! Wow, this chapter is wicked long. I wanted to put the author's note on the bottom because somehow it feels better down here for this bit, since it is so long. I just wanted to say, I know that this (and honestly, all of Point&Click) is extraordinarily detailed. I've gotten some reviews to that extent, and I hope that I've managed to keep the detail interesting at least, but there is a reason for it that you need to keep in mind as you read this story. Freddie is what you call an unreliable narrator. Writing from his perspective is a damned challenge. For one thing I've never been an adolescent boy, but I'm also totally disorganized as a human being. Freddie, though, he's pedantic, he's the best sort of nerdy, and much like my brother, has goals that he establishes for himself and executes in a steady, almost neurotically methodical way. This is why everything is a rhythm, this is why I have to go through, each day of the week, and describe his activities, because that is what Freddie thinks like. It is a constant fight for him between his wacky urges and his logical outlook. He is the character that sets up a spreadsheet for tasting pies, and generates complex charts for how much money Sam owes him. This is one of the very important reasons that I ship Seddie, because Sam compensates for this pedantry in a very unique way, but it's also just important to keep all of this in mind as you read through this story. Freddie is not telling you the *truth* or even everything that he experiences from his perspective. He is unreliable, and just like any tale, a lot of things are happening concurrently that aren't written about at all. It is up to you, dear readers, to figure it out. I'm not going to write down to my audience in any way; I know y'all can handle it. So although Point&Click is paced steadily, keep in mind that it's due to the prism through which Freddie experiences the world. **

**Right, sorry I went on for so long, but I know what it is like when you are just blasting through a fic, and I'd like everyone to clearly understand why I'm writing this the way that I am. Thank you so much for your continuing reviews, favorites, and readership. It's been totally awesome so far.**

**Edit to the author's note!:**

**I do not choose my words carefully enough in the ANs, apparently. By saying that some have commented on the amount of detail, I do NOT mean to imply that the comments have been negative. In fact, there have only been positive comments about them. None of these author notes are to defend myself whatsoever, and one should never assume that when something is stated neutrally it's a vieled attempt at negativity. Sometimes, it really is just neutral. So you don't have to tell me that you like the detail, I get that you do. This note, in particular, was the elucidate some of the finer points of writing a story to the sort of readers (of which I have known to be one) who just slam through a fic and don't stop to figure out why it's written the way it is. Maybe, that way, someone writing a fic will take what I've thought about here and apply it in their own way, or at least think about the characters and why they enjoy them, or just something a little bit more in-depth than the usual. And for those who would worry that what I choose to write next or in the future will not be as chock full of detail, I must say that it is basically impossible for me not to be so intimately familiar with the bits and bobs of any given thing that I write. There is, in fact, volumes and volumes of stuff about Point & Click that didn't make it into the story but remains personal cannon. Every detail that is in here is here on *purpose* and specifically is to contribute to the story. So! Yes! Right! Onward, I suppose.  
**


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N A decided swell in hit and visitor numbers happened the other day, you guys! Thank you so much for reading, and feel free to link around to whomever you wish. Writing the beginning of this chapter is making me feel old. Do kids still pass notes in class, or do you just silently text at each other all the time? Have you memorized the key combinations on your phones so you can text blind, inside a coat pocket? Eugh, texting. You can't doodle! It's got no character. Get off my lawn!**

**Disclaimer: If iCarly were mine, Carly wouldn't exist and the show would be called iSpencer, and he'd be 16 and it would be brilliant. Ahwell. **

* * *

It is the day after Sam and I managed to get Carly extremely fired, the Friday before Thanksgiving. Carly and I are sitting near the front of our shared Civics class, letting the day's lecture wash over us. We are both secure in the knowledge that our teacher wouldn't discuss anything beyond the assigned reading we did together last night because likely, we were the only two kids in class to actually ever do the readings. I see Carly writing with her purple sparkly pens and know she's going to pass me a note. Why does she always have to do this when we're sitting in the front of the class? She knows how nervous I get about this sort of thing! The worry creeps through my brain as the tip of her pen wriggles across the paper. I surreptitiously make eye contact with her, feeling like a super spy, and wordlessly suggest the most smooth of note-passing procedures, the Underfoot. For those not familiar with the technical name, this is the one where the note giver drops the note onto the floor, and pushes it with their foot along the floor to the outstretched foot of the note receiver. For advanced note passers only; this method does not work on carpeted floors.

Our civics teacher Mr. Groot has his back turned away from us, writing furiously on the whiteboard in a multitude of colors, and Carly takes the opening. I deftly catch the paper under my shoe and make like I'm rummaging in my backpack for another binder to cover my note retrieval. Procedure complete, I ignore Carly's stifled giggles, and open her missive.

_"Freddie- Thanks for taking such good care of Sam. Last night she told me you've been taking her home all of the time. Sorry I was such a weirdo about the GS. I promise we can do fruit jokes for iCarly tonight!  
__Hearts, Carly who is sitting right next to you__  
PS: Can you believe Groot's saggy butt in those pants?  
PPS: Do you and Sam really still hate each other?"_

No I cannot believe Mr. Groot's saggy pants. I just want to leap out of my desk and wrench them down to his undoubtedly pale ankles. I bet his boxers have Stonehenges on them or something equally dorky. I turn slightly towards Carly and smile at her. I roll my eyes a bit and vigorously shake my head. Her smile is much too wide and open-mouthed to be a proper response to pants commentary, and I realize that she probably thinks I'm replying to the PPS and not the PS. Well, no, I guess it applies equally to both. Regardless of our lack of mutual hatred, I've been spending way too much time around Sam, though. Is it possible that I just fantasized about pantsing a teacher? Carly is now looking perplexed, and I realize that my internal thoughts are writ large on my face. I hastily begin to write a reply, but luckily the bell rings before I finish.

Carly and I have it all figured out. We both relax in our seats for the fifteen seconds it takes for the rest of the class to rush the door, and manage to coolly exit unscathed by the bottleneck. Bumping good-naturedly into her shoulder, I tell Carly how glad I am that she can help take Sam off my hands again. Carly throws me an exasperated look and exclaims "I was only working part time, for a month and a half! It's not like I moved to Yakima."

We both shudder. Eugh, Yakima.

* * *

Saturday morning and it's waffles at the Shay's. iCarly went well the night before. Sam's energy was still high from causing the smoothie flood the day before, and being able to make use of our expansive catalog of fruit related jokes put everyone in a good mood. Of course, I like to think that my camera work has improved on a technical level in the past few months, too.

I'm checking the comment boards and filtering out all the spam while Spencer is stirring a big bowl of blueberry waffle mix. Sam is still in her pajamas and walks over to Spencer with a sleepy shuffle. I watch out of the corner of my eye as she just sticks her hand straight into the bowl and comes out with three fingerfulls of waffle batter. "Needs chocolate chips, Spence" she declares, after licking her hand clean with two broad swipes of her pink tongue.

Chocolate chips and blueberries in waffles at the same time? What is this world coming to? I smile quietly to myself and continue my site admin duties as Sam settles onto the couch for a post-wakeup nap. Carly traipses down the stairs maybe ten minutes later and observes the tableau. Without a word, she repairs to the kitchen, extracts bacon from the freezer and a frying pan from the cupboard, and clangs the two together on the stove. Sam shoots up with a dainty snort. "Bacon? Dibs!" she calls with her eyes closed. I would wonder when she learned to recognize the sound of frozen bacon hitting a cold frying pan, but it's more likely that she was born with the knowledge.

"No, seriously, that's why you should never drink rootbeer before math class." Spencer explains to us as we sit around the table consuming chocolate blueberry waffles and bacon. Sometimes his knowledge impresses even me. Sam reaches out to steal the last slice of bacon off of my plate, but I slap her hand away. Instead I hand her the three pieces I'd kept wrapped in my napkin for her so she wouldn't be so grabby with my breakfast. She mumbles a surprised thanks and douses them with syrup. Spencer chokes a little on his waffle. "Wrong pipe," he croaks.

There's a quiet moment when the only noises are chewing and silverware clanking against brightly colored acrylic plates. Having Carly free to spend time with us makes everything comfortable again. I marvel silently that Sam and I hadn't come to blows during Carly's employment until I remember that Sam had, indeed, punched me, almost immediately.

I'm gently rubbing my jaw bone and thinking about my prints of Sam's ferocious face hiding in the photo lab when Carly breaks the congenial silence. "Freddie, is there a way to give a present to every iCarly viewer that wants one by winter break?"

It's an impressive idea, and one that would garner us a much needed fan boost after a month of mediocre shows. The rest of our free time this week is spent figuring out the logistics of confidential address spreadsheets, small print-run sticker orders, media mail envelope purchases, and all the other minutiae involved in reaching online fans in a physical way. Carly helps as best she can, but when it comes to iCarly, she's always been more about the ideas and I'm more about the execution. What does that make Sam? The heart, I guess.

* * *

I'm still mulling this over on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Sam and I are walking to the post office to acquire a P.O. Box. We have learned our lesson from last year's fudge ball problem, and are trying to think everything through. The post office is halfway between the school and the Bushwell Plaza, so after photo lab time, we headed out together.

"Yes, Thanksgiving break!" Sam does a small jig, kicking up a few leaves in the process. It's not that much of a break, really. We just get the next three days off, and then it's back to school until Christmas.

"Yeah, but when we get back it's going to be nearly time for finals." I reach up and pull a burgundy maple leaf out of her hair.

"For you, maybe. Not my fault you signed up for like ten advanced classes. I'm not giving you any slack, Benson. I'm expecting your nerdish entertainment and a steady supply of snacks to continue unhindered throughout the season." She just rips this off like it's nothing. I make spluttering noises and act offended.

We're waiting in line at the post office when Sam asks me a question. "Where are you going for Thanksgiving?"

I think about it. Some years we would visit my cousins, but since Mom hasn't started to pack my underwear in individual plastic bags, I suspect we'll just be staying home. I tell her as much, leaving out the part about my underwear. She sort of ducks her head and looks a little embarrassed, and I realize with a small shock that I should probably invite her over for Turkey Tortilla Soup. I'm opening my mouth to do just that when she cuts me off.

"Carly misses her Dad so much, Freddie, and they were going to see him this Thanksgiving in Yakima, but he couldn't get leave for the right time, so now Spencer and her are having Thanksgiving alone and I can't invite them over to my house and I was wondering if you could invite yourself over on Thursday because Carly made me keep it a secret because she doesn't want you to worry about her cuz she thinks you might get all weird and I told her you wouldn't be. So are you going to be?" She ends her breathless run-on sentence with a finger pointed up under my chin and forceful glare.

I feel backed up against a wall even though the only barrier behind me is a velvet rope. "I... I am not going to get all weird!" I confirm hurriedly.

Sam relaxes, and says softly "Weirder than usual, that is." And in a louder voice, "Be there Thursday, with a pie, or be dead, Fredward."

* * *

Thanksgiving comes and goes. Sam had pulled it off, to everyone's mutual amazement. When I arrived at four in the afternoon with a pumpkin pie, Sam was in the Shay's kitchen actually cooking instead of eating. We'd clustered around the table with our spread of Turkey Tortilla Soup, pumpkin and coconut crème pies, sweet potatoes and green beans and stuffing and cranberry sauce not from a can, and Carly had been very, very quiet. Mom totally ruined the moment, though, by swooping in and giving Carly a great big hug. "Oh, sweetie!" she'd gushed.

"Mrs. B, you're crushing me!" Carly had squeaked.

It's the Friday after Thanksgiving now, and I'm bobbing back and forth between laptop and steadycam, filming the end of our special TurkeyDay themed iCarly.

"And that was Mark with a very educational video about corn!" shouts Sam. Over the course of the show, Carly had gotten herself into a fairly complex turkey costume. She wiggles her butt a bit and the huge fan of feathers in the back swishes. Now Sam is helping her get her arms into a pair of wings. Spencer just had the costume lying around, for some reason. "Well, it's nearly the end of our show, and we have a special announcement for you!" Sam brings her face quite close to my camera lens, waves her arms, and reveals Carly in her costume.

"Gobblegobble! I'm Carls the iCarly turkey, and I'm delicious! If you send a self-addressed envelope to the P.O. Box that's showing up on your screen right now," Carly points with a wing to the air in front of her and I dash back to hit a button on my laptop to make the address show up, "by the end of December you'll get a free iCarly sticker!"

Sam bursts out in front of Carls the turkey and shouts "FREE!"

Carls the turkey shoves Sam to the side. "We've been neglectful of you, our viewers, and we wanted to send you a present for your-"

"Non-denominational winter holiday of choice!" the girls exclaim together. Sam hits the applause button on her noise-box, as she's come to call it, and I flick on the Jingle Bell Rock to end the show. Sam is making a show of seizing Carly's feathered turkey leg and gnawing on it in a frenzy.

"And, we're off!" I shut down the live feed with a few deft keystrokes and set to archiving the files. When I look back up, Sam is still mauling Carly, who is having a bit of a hard time considering the cumbersome nature of her costume. "Sam, stop that, I need the costume intact for my photo project."

They break up, and Carly brushes her feathery self off. "Great show you guys. Can you help me get out of this thing? It itches!"

* * *

It's the following Wednesday and I'm working in the darkroom during class. The students around me are printing shots from the weekly photo assignment. It was supposed to be about transformation, and we needed to have about six shots of something turning into something else. Looking down the developing trays in the center of the darkroom I see a pretty wide variety. There's flowers wilting, one kid had documented various pies getting eaten, and flatpack furniture being assembled, but I don't think anybody else has a series of a person-sized turkey turning into a girl. I'd churned them all out the afternoon before, Sam and I chuckling at Carly's round silhouette in the costume. My favorite one of the series was definitely the image with Carly wearing her regular clothes, a beak, big scaly turkey feet, and her giant feathered tail.

Carly's turkey feet shoes had stuck, though. Spencer's creations all have that in common: they look really great once they are all together, but the befores and afters are often... problematic. The iCarly studio filled with grunting noises and squealing as Spencer and Sam stood over Carly who was lying on her back with her feet in the air. They both pulled up on their respective shoe, but it just wasn't working. Spencer gave up, panting. I was taking pictures of this ridiculous situation, of course. Helping might have been nicer of me, but I wasn't about to let this go undocumented. Spencer perks up and jabs a finger into the air. "Butter!" he exclaims, and runs down the stairs, thump thump thump.

"You're going to butter my feet?" Carly whined after him. It worked like a charm, though. As soon as Spencer reached up along her ankle and squished some butter around, Sam gave a big tug and pop! The turkey foot slid right off. She'd tumbled back, startled at how easily it had come off and fell back onto a beanbag, her feet up in the air above her head, laughing.

That is the shot I'm developing in class today, meticulously adjusting the developing time, dodging and burning to get it exactly right. My favorite part of photography class has got to be watching the print develop. I watch as the cloud of silver slowly forms the contours of Sam's hair, spilled out below her grinning, laughing face on the curve of the beanbag. I agitate the print a little and I'm happy to see that burning in her feet worked well for the composition of the print. Her feet are in the top of the frame, each as big as her head, her toes sharply in focus, and you can see the upside down toe family she'd drawn on them with a ballpoint earlier in the day. Originally the shot had Carly and Spencer off to the side, but I cropped and cropped until it was a portrait orientation and it was just a joyful, upside-down Sam. The negative just doesn't work any other way, I lie to myself. Slipping it confidently into the stop-bath I go out into the light to collect my transformation prints from the drying rack, but Mrs. Grey already has them spread out in front of her on her desk.

"Spencer Shay?" she inquires.

"How did you know?" I respond, a little concerned.

"The costume. It's been twelve years since I saw pictures of that thing, but I'd recognize it anywhere." She's pointing at Carly's beaked face. "He came to school in it and started a protest in the cafeteria about the turkey lunch. They were finding stuffing in the rafters a year later."


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N I felt really, really dirty writing this chapter, it was weird considering that I read tortureporn pulp comic books for fun. And now, a word on reviews. I know sometimes it is hard to know what you should say in a review, but the thing that would be most helpful to me is if you could specify a particular bit that you like best, and why. Like, I know some of you do that already, and I want you to know that I'm extremely grateful. It helps me to know what I'm doing right, so I can keep doing that in the future. Also of course letting me know what isn't working is even *more* important, but if you aren't feeling critical that's fine. This is the penultimate chapter of Point&Click! Thank you for your continuing appreciation in whatever form it may come.**

**Disclaimer: iCarly is not mine, but I do like to throw hammers at teenage girls. **

* * *

It's only two weeks before winter finals. Sam is looking forward to the break while Carly and I are busily studying together. I know Sam has to study some time, but she signs up for the easiest classes and is a lot smarter than she's given credit for. I'm briefly envious of her obvious plan of getting by with the smallest amount of work possible, but Carly brings my attention back to advanced biology. My head swims with classes and phylums as she quizzes me with index cards in her living room.

"Man, enough of this. I can't keep my biospheres straight." I collapse back onto the couch, and let my head hang off the edge so all the blood rushes to my brain.

"Thank cheese for that!" Sam's voice comes from behind me. Spencer is drawing the back of her head for practice, so she's perched on a stool near his art tables.

"I have to think of some way to do my last photography assignment other than the final." I announce to the apartment at large. Carly politely asks what it is, and I explain that I have to use some alternate light source, something that isn't sunlight or lightbulbs. Spencer suggests vats of bioluminescent jellyfish. Sam suggests attaching a lightning rod to my subject matter. Carly suggests candles. Candles it is.

"But what can I shoot in candlelight that isn't boring? I mean, a bowl of fruit is a bowl of fruit." I'm at a loss for ideas. It's been hard each week to come up with something new. I'm not used to taking art classes and it shows. Sam changes the subject to what we're having for dinner and the topic is all but forgotten.

Later in the evening, Sam is lying contentedly full of Indian curry on the couch downstairs while Carly and I are storing the boxes of candles we picked up on the way back from the take-out place. I drag out one of the _Miscellaneous_ storage bins from the closet in the iCarly studio when Carly broaches the subject of my photography assignment.

"Um, Freddie, I don't know if you want to take more pictures of me, but, I was wondering, could I be the subject for your weird lighting project?" She's obviously nervous about her words having the wrong connotation. Candlelit photography of Carly? Sounds good to me. Maybe I'd be able to get enough good shots out of the session to finally get all nine images for the final, too. I think about the fact that I only have maybe three good shots of Carly so far, and shrug it off. Maybe if I look back at my negatives with a more discerning eye, I would find some to print that I hadn't noticed before. Carly is waiting nervously for my response.

"Sure, if you're volunteering, of course. What should you be doing in them though? Any ideas?" I try to smile disarmingly.

"Actually, yeah. Just a really nice Christmas portrait. I want to send it to my dad. He hasn't seen me in so long. I mean, he can get online once in a while, but there's something different about having an actual photo..." She trails off and I realize that she wasn't nervous about sounding like she's flirting with me; she's nervous because she almost never mentions the fact that she has a dad at all.

"That sounds great! Do you want to do it right now? If I worked on them right away we could totally mail it in time." Pushing the storage tub back in its place together, Carly and I get to work on placing candles around the studio. We pull down the greenscreen backdrop, which we've found makes a perfectly good neutral backdrop in black and white, and pull over some huge empty gift boxes with bows all over them. We had made those for the sticker graphics and they had become regular background props in the show.

I step out for a few minutes to visit my apartment and retrieve my camera. As I walk past Sam, she snores a little, so I poke her side, and she stretches and rolls over. Spencer is still drawing her, sheets of used newsprint littering the ground around him. When I come back from getting my camera and saying hello to Mom, who is happily bleaching our bathtub, I notice that the vast majority of Spencer's drawings are of fish, and sports cars, and fish driving sports cars.

When I step out of the elevator on the third floor I'm a bit taken aback. There's a warm luminescence that's refracting off of every available surface, and Carly is brushing her hair. She's changed into a simple blue dress and I pause for a moment, absorbing the situation. I would have given anything to be in this spot a few months ago, but for some reason right now I'm just glad to be helping Carly out with something so personal. Thoughts of cheesy lines involving the phrase "Freddie Techno Magic" most definitely do not fly through my head, not at all. Carly coughs a little uncomfortably and settles onto a chair draped with a fleece blanket, next to the giant gift boxes. I move around, trying to find some good angles, as she smiles fleetingly.

"Think about something that makes you happy," I instruct as I snap a few unsatisfactory frames.

Carly's brows draw together slightly as she sighs. "Any suggestions?"

"Well, your brother is downstairs, drawing Sam, who apparently looks a lot like a tuna driving a souped up Honda Civic when she's asleep." That works. She cracks a true smile, and I get my shot.

"Hey, maybe Spencer would want to send a picture to your dad too," I suggest carefully. Luckily, it seems to be a good idea to Carly, who gets up and shouts down for her brother to come upstairs. Meanwhile, I take some pictures of the iCarly studio props. They all look so different in the candlelight; the transformative power of the soft, flickering light is amazing. In candlelight, a bowl of fruit is not just a bowl of fruit.

The elevator dings and the door slides open to reveal Spencer and Sam, who is wrapped in a fuzzy blanket. Carly waves him over, but the second he turns the corner and sees all the lit candles, he lets out a piercing shriek. "Fire! Fire! I can't be in here, I'll burn the whole place down!" He runs out the door and down the back stairs, arms flailing.

"Oh, Spencer, come back! It's safe! We have fire extinguishers... three of them!" Carly runs after her brother, down the stairs.

"So, having a little romantic interlude up here in the studio?" Sam swans through the candles, deftly avoiding their flames and somehow not catching her blanket on fire. She plops on the only available chair that doesn't have candles on it, the chair Carly was sitting in for the shoot.

So I explain, calmly, about Carly's present for her dad. Sam's eyebrows go up in understanding and she thoughtfully changes the subject. "Spencer's fear might be justified, you know." She pushes the giant presents to the side with her foot. "Weren't you there the day he caught on fire while taking a shower?"

We have a good laugh about Spencer's seemingly mutant fire powers, but I debate her point. "Nothing bad would have happened, though. If something is already on fire, he's totally safe." Sam laughs, and nods. She reaches over, licks her fingers, and puts a few candles out by pinching their wicks. She's silently daring me to do the same, so I do. It burns a bit, but I try very hard not to show it.

I hear a low chuckle and it's Sam laughing at my pain. There's a quiet pause that feels completely comfortable in the flickering soft light, and Sam's staring at me, her shoulders wrapped in blankets but her neck straight. I lift my camera slowly. She holds her gaze steady as I line up the shot and click the shutter button three times.

* * *

I'm in the darkroom the Tuesday before our final is due. I'm printing the negative of Sam I shot last week, taking my chances because Sam is working in the lab at the same time. I've decided that, since Sam knows specifically about me taking this shot, I'll give her a copy as a present. It's beautiful, there's a look on her face I can't quite pin down, and she should have it.

Sam has a lot of cleaning to do. The darkroom is pretty full even though it's after school, with kids working hard on their final projects. Most of them seem to have put it off until the last moment, and I'm still in denial about not having enough shots of Carly. There's messes everywhere, and Sam is still in detention, whether it normally feels like it or not. Mrs. Grey is extremely pleased to have a helper for finals. I expose Sam's candlelit headshot for fifty seconds at a very low intensity to make sure I get as much detail as possible, and walk out to develop it. I thought Sam was out in the lit part of the lab cleaning trays, but she's in the darkroom, sweeping the floor. She has a sizable pile of dust and I'm thankful that it's getting swept up and not all over my negatives. We nod to each other, and I know she sees her face on the print as I swish it around in the developer, but she doesn't say anything. I time the stop-bath with my watch, deposit it into the fixer with a confidence I did not possess in September, and struggle through the other, buzzing students back to my projector closet to choose another slide of Sam.

I turn on the projector, the thin light painting Sam's flipped face onto the paper frame while I squint at my sheet of negatives. There's three shots of her, and I can't decide which one is best. I'm about to pull the last five frames out of their protective sleeve when Sam breaks in and quickly closes the door behind her.

"They're all of me. I found them, in a folder in Grey's filing cabinet. Eight of them. They're all of me, and this is the ninth."

I'm caught. I panick, trapped between an idealized inverted image of Sam and the real, demanding one. My hands are shaking and the negative sleeve shivers in my left hand. I reach over with my right and turn off the projector light.

I close my eyes, hoping the pitch black will make Sam disappear, but I can hear sounds of her breathing the stale and chilly darkroom air. The warmth of her body is radiating onto mine. These closets are not built for two people. I can't move without touching her. The darkness brings minimal comfort; I manage to squeak out "They're just...how I see you. And I was making this one as a-mrph!"

She's grabbed in the pitch black and found my left wrist, pressed it back against the wall, and the negatives fall out as I open my hands in surprise, because at the same time I feel a warm rush and what must be her nose is brushing my cheek. Her nose finds mine and her feet fumble a bit due to our blindness and suddenly we shift and she's kissing me. It's hard and soft and her lips are kind of chapped and her hair is tickling my neck and I'm not sure either of us are breathing and after only a few seconds she withdraws.

I lick my lips after the fact.

She's still got her hand on my wrist and it's trembling. I reach over and extricate it, suddenly remembering my print. I push past her, into the relative light of the darkroom, and single-mindedly move my photo into the first wash.

I hurry back to my closet where Sam is hiding, looking out at me from the half closed door. I think, is it possible, that she looks scared. So I push her back with me into the tiny space, and close the door behind me.

"I really don't want to mess up the keystone to my final project. I've been... I've been working on it for four months." My mouth is inches away from her face, and I whisper this toward what must be her left ear. There's another pause; I'm clenching and unclenching my fists, unsure of what to do next, but I know I can't, for whatever reason, move to the side.

A sort of guttural sound emerges from Sam's throat, and we're kissing for the second time. She's got me pressed up against the door, one hand holding my shoulder and the other jammed uncomfortably between my arm and the wall. She's leaning toward me so I have to hunch a bit and bend my neck. I hope she can feel my smile on her lips, because I pull back momentarily. Only to catch her trapped hand with mine, though, and we're kissing again as I grasp her waist and push her back, toward the projector.

The second I push back, this sweet sigh comes out of what might be her nose, and she opens her mouth and licks my bottom lip and I'm so surprised and enjoying this so much that I push her back more, harder against the ledge that the projector stands on. Her hand trails up to my neck and I get this completely insane idea to bite her lower lip a little bit, and our feet shuffle as our weight shifts.

This is when I hear a loud, complicated crunching noise – my negatives being crushed and trod upon.

Immediately I unravel myself from Sam. A rush of developer-scented cold air wafts between us as I whine "Sam! You RUINED them!" and stoop down between her legs to find my film.

Wan red light wedges into the projector closet and I see the negatives by my hand. I grab their bent form and straighten up to the sound of Sam's footsteps running hard and fast away from me.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N This is the last chapter! This is an extremely long chapter, too. I was going to leave a big author's note, but I just want to say thank you! It was very difficult for me to write this and keep it in character, but I think I did it. I'm sure, after maybe a little break, I'll write more fanfic, but give me a while, yeah? Whatever I write though sure isn't going to be in present tense. Stylistic choices are sometimes totally not worth it! Anyway, I hope you enjoy the conclusion of Point&Click!  
**

**Disclaimer: I don't own iCarly but I totally should, amiright?**

* * *

I don't run after her. I don't spill my heart out to her. We don't passionately embrace in the rays of the winter sunset.

I'm a fourteen year old boy for god's sake. I have no idea what I'm doing except that I seem to have hurt and scared my spitfire best friend after five minutes of uncomfortable lip-lock in a smelly, crowded darkroom. One thing I do know though is that it is time to pull my prints out of the final wash, squeegee them off and lay them out to dry. I carefully gather my things, studiously ignoring my protesting brain, and head out to the classroom. There are fewer students here, and I take a few deep, slow breaths as I lean against the table I have come to think of as mine.

Mrs. Grey comes up to me, a concerned look on her face. "Freddie, did you see Sam just now? She ran out of here, making some excuse about having leprosy." The bangles on her wrists clatter gently as she expressively waves her arms around. "Do you know what's going on?"

Damn. I feel myself blushing, and a lie blurts out of my throat unbidden. "No, last I saw she was sweeping in the darkroom. She must have left when I was exposing a print?" I swallow hard. Mrs. Grey looks worried, so I try to make it better. "Her mom is sick an awful lot?" I suggest. This does nothing to improve the situation.

"Oh dear! Do you think everything will be alright?" We walk towards her desk. I see a manila envelope with my name on it in Mrs. Grey's block capitals.

"Ah, Freddie, here are your assignments from the last month. Might as well give them to you now. You'd just get them tomorrow anyway. Good job! The progress you've made on your final is in there too, I thought you might like to consider their order and placement at home." She hands me the hefty envelope. I thank her, and, as coolly as possible, run the hell away. I hear "Tell Sam to report to me Thursday like usual!" fading into the distance behind me.

Exiting from the school's backdoor affords me some calm. I can walk around the side of the building and check our oak tree to see if Sam is there without her seeing me. When I see that she isn't there, I breathe a deep sigh of relief, lean against the rough trunk, and dial Mom.

Mom is a little concerned that Sam isn't there when she comes to pick me up, but I lie again, this time that Carly and Spencer took her home, and she seems to accept it. We make it home without further events, and I collapse myself and my school things onto my crisply made bed.

It's only after Mom comes in with some rice crackers and soy milk that I allow myself to actually move or think. "Mom, can I ask you a question?" This comes out a lot higher pitched than I would have liked it to.

She lights up, places her snack tray on my desk, and perches at the foot of my bed. "Of course you can. Come here, sweetie." She pats beside her, and I begrudgingly sit up and scoot over.

"If you needed to apologize to a girl, but you don't know exactly what it is that you did wrong, except you know you haven't really been telling her the truth for a few months, and you are afraid you'll lose your best friend if you don't do anything about it, what would you do?" This last part is said to the ceiling as I fall back in a huff on my pillows.

Mom looks concerned for a moment, her mom-logic visibly processing on her face, and then she smiles at me. "Just talk to Carly. Explain everything to her as best you can. She's a sweet girl. She'll understand."

I make a sort of humming noise, realizing the ridiculousness of the situation, and mumble out "thanks Mom; can you close my door on your way out?" She obligingly gets up, petting my hair as she leaves, and closes the door. Maybe I should take a nap. Sam, at least, always seems to get better ideas when she wakes up from one...

There's something sharp and crunching poking into my stomach. I wake up from my nap with a grunt, wiping the puddle of drool from the side of my face. I've rolled onto my stomach, my leg is uncomfortably hitched over my backpack, and my shirt has bunched and ridden up during my nap. I reach beneath me with a slightly moist hand and extricate the manila envelope with all of my photos in it. In a panic, I rip it open, hoping that I haven't bent any of my prints. Mrs. Grey makes all this talk about the physicality of manual photography being superior to digital, but considering how easily you can destroy a print with a little nap, or a negative with an unaware foot, I'm starting to dissagree with her position.

Relieved to see that everything is still nice and flat, I spread the images out across my bed. The cover sheet reads clearly "FREDDIE BENSON~ EXCELLENT PROGRESSION. DECEMBER EFFORT: A+ WEEKLIES~ TRANSFORMATION: B+ (CONSIDER POSES) ALT. LIGHT: A- (GOOD JUXT. OF MOD. & OLD, STRONG PORTRAIT)" Chuckling at Carly the turkey, I studiously avoid all my prints of Sam, tucking them into a bedside drawer. Carly's been a wonderful sport this whole semester. My original plan of artistic seduction had somehow turned on its head. Instead of a romantic partner, I ended up with a much closer friend than before.

I touch Carly's Christmas photo for her dad with the tips of my fingers. This is a copy, of course, the real one being sent off a week ago. I'd included it as extra credit on my assignment, wanting in some way to impress upon Mrs. Grey that all of the Shays didn't live in turkey costumes. I reach over to my desk and chew on a dry rice cracker, slowly. Something is clicking together in my brain but I can't figure out yet what it is. The fact that Carly had talked to me about her dad at all was surprising, but engineering the candlelit situation like that seemed almost...contrived. My brain finally makes the connection and I realize, yes. Just talk to Carly. She's a sweet girl, and she will understand.

* * *

Too afraid to risk Sam having slept over at Carly's last night, I now find myself at lunch the next day without having talked to either of them. The tension is so stifling I swear it's giving me hives. I scratch my neck and stab viciously at the baked potato on my cafeteria tray. I had retrieved the last print of Sam in the class before, and I feel like it's burning a hole through my backpack. Carly is alternating between staring at me and staring at Sam. Sam isn't eating. This whole thing is a lot more drastic than I thought it was. After the worst lunch of my life, I grab Carly by the arm and drag her into a corner by the trashcans.

"What is going on Freddie? Do you know what happened with Sam?" Carly asks before I can begin.

"Yeah, um, talk to me after school. I have some things to show you and I left them in my room. Don't bring Sam, okay?" She nods, grimly, and asks me to wish her luck on her math final.

It's only ten minutes after I get home when Carly's knocking on my door. Her arms are crossed. Posed in my door frame, she has a harsh expression on her face. "I asked Sam and she said it was your fault, whatever it was."

"It was." I pull her in and to my room. She sits down in my desk chair, expecting an explanation, so I give it to her. With all the courage I can muster, I spread out my prints of Sam on my bed. "My photo final, it's not of you anymore." I force out.

Carly's gotten up out of the chair and comes over to get a closer look. I dig around in my backpack and extricate the last, candlelit portrait of Sam and place it at the top of the other eight prints. "I didn't mean for this to happen. That one is the only one I took on purpose, I think. Maybe."

Carly is sitting across from me on my bed now. "That still doesn't explain why Sam's so mad."

"I didn't tell her. She found out. Then we kissed, and I yelled at her by accident, and now she's never going to talk to me again!" I slump back against my headboard, frowning.

"You what?" Carly's smiling, wide. "Did you say that you kissed? Sam Puckett?"

"Er, well, she sort of kissed me, but it turned into a reciprocal thing. I don't know why she did it! If I had been secretly making pictures of you all year, and you found out, wouldn't you think it was creepy?" Once, with a door between us in the dark, Sam had itemized all of the creepy things I did in the name of my adoration of Carly. This was part of why I had never intended to tell her about my final.

Carly's got her face up in mine now, leaning towards me with her hands on either side of the photos. "You ARE a dork. Have you even looked at these pictures? She's had a crush on you since last year!"

I choke a little. "What? That can't be true."

"I've been trying to give you two space for ages. I mean, first I told her that I didn't want to wait for her until she got out of detention anymore. Then I told everyone but the two of you to stop hanging out at the oak tree. Then I got that job, but that obviously didn't work out." She's numbering on her fingers, counting all the little plans and schemes she'd arranged. "Oh, and of course, I made funny faces every time you were taking pictures of me." She finishes confidently.

"Does...does she know?"

"Of course not. She'd kill me in a second. I don't know that she knows I know she likes you. Which would explain why she didn't come over last night. I wonder where she went?"

"The Starbucks by her house. And then likely, the treehouse outside her window all night, even though it's cold." It's obvious, really. Why Carly wouldn't know this is a mystery to me. I stack Sam's photos back up, carefully touching only the edges.

"So, you do like her back." Carly says this as a statement, not a question. When I splutter and make croaking noises in response, she rolls her eyes. "Freddie?"

"Yes?"

"Would you like to kiss me?" She licks her lips, and gazes at me with big brown eyes. She's on my bed, with my door closed, and my mom out of the apartment. She leans toward me, very, very slowly.

"I like Sam back! Okay! Stop!" In a second Carly's off my bed and back in the chair, clapping her hands in a very self-satisfactory manner. I sweep my hand through my hair and rub my face. "You ARE sassy."

Carly frowns.

"So..." I begin uncomfortably.

"So, I'm going to fix this. Your final is tomorrow, right? I can't sit through another lunch like today." Carly lets herself out of my room. Something inside of me winds up and I'm left with a jumble of new facts to sort through.

I should be angry with Carly, I think to myself. I didn't ask to fall for Sam like I so obviously had. Carly had manipulated us. What had I ever done to show Sam I'd like her back, anyway?

Unbidden, the answers swim into my mind. I'd listen to her ramble every Tuesday and Thursday. I'd kept her company on walks home, and spent time just sitting next to her, not demanding that she be or do anything special. I'd made her feel okay about having such a weird mom. I'd rescued her from an eternity with Briggs, neatly causing her to spend more time with me, alone, with minimal teacher supervision. I'd commiserated with her when Carly was working, and helped Sam every time she wanted to do something special for Carly. And then there was the food.

Sweat breaks out on my forehead as I think back over the months. The way she would dive into my pockets in the hallways, brushing up against me, her hair getting in my face, her hands only a layer of fabric away from touching me, her smile and pleasantness after finding herself a snack, the way she'd sometimes lean on me; I hadn't been training her, she'd been taking advantage of me! She had me exactly, absolutely where she wanted me.

And I loved it.

* * *

Mrs. Grey instructs all of us to find a spot big enough, and spread out our final projects. It's the next day and I have yet to see more than a passing glimpse of Sam, but Carly has given me a big thumbs up as we cross in the hallway.

I find a spot and begin placing my photos in order. My heart drops as I hear Carly's voice from around the corner. "Sam. Sam! Get over here!" Risking it, I crane my neck around the door and see Carly hauling with all her strength on a completely slack Sam. She's just rumpled, dragging on the floor, pretending desperately to be a rock.

"Why should I go in there? I don't owe you anything, missy." Sam's voice is low and petulant.

"You don't owe me? Who stayed up all night, scraping nasty blue fungus from your mother's crevices? All of them?" Carly throws Sam's hand away and it hits the floor with the rest of Sam's body.

"Ow! Okay, okay, so I owe you one." Sam rubs the back of her hand.

"Yes. Yes you do, and I am calling it in. Get in there!" Carly pushes Sam towards my classroom and I hastily return to my spot, standing in front of my final. Sam sidles up against the wall, trying not to be seen.

Mrs. Grey sees her though, and jangles up to her, very concerned. "Sam, is everything all right? Your mother is okay?"

Sam waves her hand in a gesture of ambivalence. "Ehn, Mom's doing as well as she always is. Um, can I watch the final? I kind of...am curious." She's staring at me, hard.

Mrs. Grey nods congenially, and the final reviews begin. We go around the class, each student explaining their subject and the progression of it. Sometimes Mrs. Grey will ask questions, but it's not a full critique. There's a series on one girl's puppy. One group of photos is just nine pictures of different kinds of caffeinated beverages. Another kid tried to be clever, taking shots of photography paraphernalia, thinking that Mrs. Grey would be very impressed. She wasn't, of course. Shane briefly explains the nine photos of his friends, organized by clique and dress-sense. It finally swings around to my turn. Sam has grown very bored by this point, but she straightens up and I move to the side so she can see my project clearly.

"These are all of Sam Puckett. She's, um, my best friend, I guess. I didn't mean to make her the subject, but she's so fascinating to me, it ended up that way." I pause, uncomfortably, not sure about how to go on.

"And what are these words you've written on the bottom of each frame?" Mrs. Grey is gesturing to the white mats I've put each picture in.

"Oh, well, she's got these sides to her. Some of them are kind of scary but I like them all anyway." Risking a a nervous grin in Sam's direction I point at each one in turn.

The first one is Sam with her hands on her hips, annoyed with me paying so much attention to Carly. I've labeled it "Warning."

Number two is Sam's grimace as her fist comes in from the right side of the picture, just about to punch me, labeled "Threat."

Three is Crusherella, Carly swinging above her head, Sam's face filled with excitement and power. That one has "Ego" written below it.

"Passion" is the fourth. Sam's eating beef jerky with a haze of craziness behind her, a bubble of bliss around her smiling face and closed eyes.

Number five is barely recognizable as Sam. She's a hulking blob, totally covered in smoothie, except for her shimmering, mischievous eyes and grinning toothy smile I've titled "Trickster."

Six is "Resilience." Haloed in the rain, Sam is jumping in puddles seemingly made of light, her black umbrella a smudge on the corner of the asphalt.

I've written "Joy" on the seventh photo. It's of Sam upside-down on a beanbag with her feet above her head, right after freeing Carly from turkey feet.

In the eighth photograph, Sam is sleeping contentedly in the sun against our oak tree, a small smile on her lips. It's named "Exterior."

The last one, the candlelit portrait, is labeled "Interior." When I look back at Sam watching me read the titles off, she's got the exact same expression on her face as the one in the portrait.

There's another pause, as Mrs. Grey writes something on her clipboard. Then she lifts her head, and asks a terrible question. "Sam is here right now, class. Sam, what do you think of Freddie's project? Do you like it?"

Sam is taken by surprise not by the question, but by Shane. He had been standing with his back to her the whole time, I guess not knowing she was there, but as soon as Mrs. Grey asks her question, he whips around to follow her gaze.

"Eeek! She's actually here!" Shane screams, a girly high-pitched scream, and faints, right on the spot.

Mrs. Grey and the rest of the class rush towards Shane. Someone runs off to get the nurse. There is general pandemonium. Sam is laughing, all the tension from just a minute before draining visibly from her posture.

Navigating my way across the classroom, I make my way towards her. She sees me coming and tries to stop laughing, but she can't. There's the glistening of a tear in her eye. She sniffles her nose, and clutches her hand against her chest, trying to get her breath back.

I put my hands in my pockets, trying to strike a confident posture. "I'm sorry. You didn't ruin anything at all." When the confident pose doesn't work, I lean towards her conspiratorially. "So, do you like my project?"

She's still chuckling, but she takes a deep breath and gets it under control. "Yeah, it's pretty good." A smile shimmers across her face and she leans toward me. She punches me lightly on the shoulder, and when I raise my hand to rub the spot she leans closer and kisses me on the cheek. Then she's gone, vanishing down the hall.

* * *

I wait that afternoon for Sam, not having anything left to do in the photolab, as she sweeps and cleans for Mrs. Grey. Mom's working an afternoon shift so we walk home together through the chill. It's quiet. We don't discuss anything, there's no laughter, and every time I look at Sam she's looking straight ahead. Once though, we catch ourselves staring at each other, and after that we hold gloved hands the few blocks left before home.

Through the lobby and up the stairs, Sam drags me by the hand. In front of Carly's door though, we mutually decide to let go as we let ourselves in. Carly's lying on the kitchen table on her back, Spencer doing the same on the kitchen island. They both have bowls of cereal on their stomachs.

Shedding ourselves of winter coats and gloves, Sam and I don't bother to ask. It all feels ridiculously normal. We hang out and rehearse for tomorrow's iCarly. We talk about Spencer's new sculpture, our classes, and what's for dinner. Sam and I occasionally brush up against each other, or glance at each other, but no more, I realize, than normal. Carly doesn't ask, and we don't say anything.

Carly's phone rings when we're talking about what the next random debate should be between. She looks at the number, her eyes get a bit wide, and she rushes off to answer it in Spencer's room. Sam and I are alone on the Shay's couch. I look around, sheepishly, and take her hand in mine.

Sam clucks her tongue. "Fredster, correct me if I am wrong, but the delightful Mrs. B is currently at work, yes?" She rubs her thumb over my knuckles.

"You would indeed be correct."

She's dragged me across the hall, and I fumble with my key to get the door open as quickly as possible, but once it's open we don't go any further.

Sam's got me pressed up against the doorframe, her hands cupping my cheeks and the rest of her seemingly all over me and I would wonder where she learned to kiss like this except I'm too busy noticing how she's got her thigh pressed against mine. I laugh into her mouth a little bit, and this stops her soft worrying of my upper lip and I take my opportunity to put my hands on her waist and push her back against the other side of the doorframe. Her hands trail around my shoulders and neck and she makes that sweet sighing noise again, and I realize quite suddenly that she likes it the best when I fight back.

Her hands are making circles, lower along my back, and I actually get to gently bite her lip like I had wanted to just this Tuesday. She likes it so much she reciprocates and then she kisses my jaw and my neck and it's completely brilliant. Then, she says "ahah!" and stops kissing me entirely, and I feel a granola bar from my back pocket being removed.

"Sam! Right now? Honestly?" I've still got my arms wrapped around her and our legs are supporting each other's weight. She's unwrapped the chocolate chip granola bar and is taking a big, satisfactory bite. She smiles with her teeth, and nods, her eyebrows waggling. I sigh, and resume kissing her jaw, trailing down to her neck, and she hums contentedly.

I'm examining the curve of her neck to her shoulder with my mouth while I reach up and tug gently on her hair, tired of not having any attention paid back to me, but the only thing I can think about is what a picture we would make, framed by the doorway like this. Sam responds to the hair tug, her hand slipping behind my ear as she leans in to kiss me again, when we hear a digital clicking noise.

"Now that's a good shot." Carly says. She's stowing her camera-phone in her pocket as Sam and I break apart. We freeze, both too embarrassed to respond. Carly shrugs and smiles. "Hey, don't stop on my account. Except that you should know, that was my dad. I'm going to Yakima for winter break. He got leave!"

I should be happy for Carly. I should go over and hug her and tell her I'll miss her and to have fun. But instead I'm thinking about spending the next three weeks with Sam, and no distractions. It's a scary thought, and I can't wait.


End file.
